Voeux de crise, Voix de garage

The FRAC Bourgogne responded to this call for partnership projects and asked Clara Denidet to lead this artistic and cultural education project with high school students.

This exhibition is above all the fruit of an encounter, that of an artist and a small group of young people studying for a vocational training certificate in bodywork at the Pierre Bérégovoy high school in Nevers (58).
From the very beginning of this artistic and cultural education project entrusted to Clara Denidet, the artist expressed the wish to work with students in vocational sections, who are sometimes far removed from contemporary creation.
After a period of scepticism and mistrust, the artist succeeded in drawing the students into her project step by step and initiating a process of reflection with them based on the techniques and know-how of the bodywork workshop.
Clara Denidet first offered the students the opportunity to discover her work, and then presented the "crisis wishes" project based on her research into ex-votos, popular beliefs and our relationship to lucky objects.
Together, they invested the self-narrative and the infinite game of symbols as materials that produce images, meaning and sometimes care. Using the tools and know-how of the bodywork trade, the students made small sculptural objects from the metal sheets of damaged cars, which they cut up, hammered out and gave new functions and powers.
In the continuity of the work carried out with these students and in order to help them understand what happened, Clara Denidet proposes, in the exhibition space, three texts telling the story of this experience, the sometimes complex and unexpected emotions produced by the project and the links that were woven between the people.
She also shows the beauty of the gesture and of the material worked on which the light runs.