The Fontevraud mutiny

“Within the walls of Fontevraud Abbey, where 150 years of prison history have taken place, I propose to conjure up a fantastical vision of what the prison might have been like at the time of a mutiny. This vision is inspired by the images of the dismantling of the Abbey’s prison use ordered by the heritage architects, since they proceed from the same impetus.

We imagine the walls shaking, collapsing, being disarmed by the mutineers, who will never let them lock anyone in again. We see the spaces burning – the kitchens, the great nave, all engulfed in flames and smoke; chaos descending on Fontevraud like a storm on a burning ship.

I depict these scenes with the very material of escape: iron filings held against the paper by the force of magnetism. Drawing with this iron powder, which could be produced by the inmate carefully filing down the bars of his cell, enables me to directly represent the material of the prison as it crumbles and collapses. When handled, this iron powder naturally produces drips that immediately evoke wisps of smoke – as if the material itself dictated the story of the escape, of the mutiny, by placing it under the sign of fire. From then on, the Abbey, assaulted from within, disintegrates and catches fire, like the surface of the glass on which I etch, projecting sparks of incandescent steel to draw flames that, on oxidation, take on orange and gold hues.

In 1622, two monks set fire to several areas of the forest surrounding the Abbey. One of the culprits, Jacques Dantui, finally denounced himself: he was defrocked, put in irons, but eventually escaped.

At the crossroads of historical anecdote and the imagination dictated by the subject matter of my drawings, I’m interested in blending the rigor of documentation with the impetus of fantasy, even the phantasmagorical, by incorporating disproportionate figures, anachronisms, mythical inspirations drawn from the aesthetics of the Towers of Babel, or cut-outs from engravings by Francisco de Goya and Piranesi.

Incorporating the features and intentions of Piranesi’s Prisons Imaginaires and Francisco de Goya’s Disasters of War into this new series, which can now be called “The Mutiny at Fontevraud”, means entrusting it with the task of carrying this imaginary, but much-imagined, event with the same intensity that these masterful engravings can still elicit today.”