Carte blanche to Camille Chastang

This temporary exhibition takes the form of an installation combining wallpaper, works on paper and ceramics. It highlights the decorative richness of the Arc de triomphe while revealing its sensitive and organic dimension.

The monument's sculpted ornaments constitute a powerful symbolic vocabulary, originally celebrating military victory, the glory of armies and national memory. The palms, which are omnipresent in the Salle de l'Attique, embody both triumph and homage, placing the stone in a solemn and commemorative register.

In dialogue with these motifs, Camille Chastang 's work reveals their sensitive and political significance. The ornament becomes the bearer of stories, silences and absences - particularly those of women, whose flowers and palms have never found a place at the foot of the monument.

Installed in the Salle des Palmes, the work questions the political and poetic dimensions of the ornament, and more broadly the question of the presence and absence of women within this emblematic heritage site. Camille Chastang weaves a subtle link between the intimate and the monumental, between decoration and memory.

Born in 1994, Camille Chastang lives and works between Normandy and Paris. After initial training in textile design, she moved away from the applied arts to study at the Beaux-Arts, where she developed a critical approach to drawing as a medium in its own right. She graduated from the Villa Arson in Nice in 2020.

Her artistic practice, which is both drawn and written, is part of a plastic and theoretical research that questions the hierarchy of mediums, forms and subjects within artistic practices. Through drawing, decoration and ornament, Camille Chastang seeks to deconstruct the power relationships and value systems that structure art history, while giving a central place to narratives that are often relegated to the margins.

She has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in Paris, Nice, Marseille and Lyon, as well as solo shows at the Abbaye de Fontevraud, the FRAC Picardie and the Double-V gallery (Marseille/Paris). At the same time, she is developing an important work of mediation and transmission, regularly collaborating with various audiences through workshops and creative projects.

She is a prize-winner in the Création en cours programme with the Ateliers Médicis, and has taken part in residencies such as Rouvrir le monde at the Collection Yvon Lambert in Avignon. Her drawings have also been published in the contemporary drawing magazines Roven and The Drawer.

As a contemporary artist, how did you approach working in a heritage monument so steeped in national and military history?

In my work, I offer a reinterpretation of certain moments in art history and imagery, to shift our perspective a little. So it was interesting for me to work from this visually charged location. I freed myself somewhat from this military image by trying to bring a more intimate and decorative presence back to the heart of the exhibition.

Palm leaves, friezes and acanthus leaves feature heavily on the monument. Why did you choose to incorporate them into your work?

Acanthus leaves and plant elements are already very present in my work because of their decorative potential. So it seemed quite obvious to me to use this motif for the Arc de Triomphe project, as a way of extending the existing ornamentation while offering an interpretation linked to my own artistic and theoretical questions.

I also enjoy the idea of exaggerating the ribbons and flowers, which are already present in the monument's decoration but are not necessarily highlighted in the official narrative of the site.

Can you explain how these works were created and how the different media – wallpaper, works on paper, ceramics – interact with each other in your artistic approach?

The drawings are done in ink on paper; the wallpaper is digitally printed from scanned drawings, enlarged and then reworked. The small pieces of glazed earthenware (ceramic) are rather evocative of the drawn patterns and allow me to play with 2D/3D effects and scale, which are quite present in my work. I like these media to flow between each other, and I play with the notions of background and foreground, which respond to each other without hierarchy.

The installation refers to a little-known event from 1970. Why was it important for you to bring this episode to light?

In fact, what struck me about this episode was that these activists, arrested by the police, were never able to lay their wreath of flowers [on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier]! So it was important and interesting for me to take advantage of this installation to symbolically bring in this bouquet, evoked by the drawings and ceramic flowers. My work is generally subtly political.

What role do you give the public in the evolution or transformation of the installation?

The idea is to let the public take control of part of the wallpaper in two stages: one area is more like a colouring book, where I invite them to colour in my drawings, and another area is completely open to interpretation.

I think it's going to be very beautiful, because this kind of intervention allows me to step outside my own perspective and approach to discover others, which break free from the codes associated with contemporary drawing.

What would you like visitors to feel when walking through the installation? Is there a question you would like them to ask themselves when leaving the exhibition?

I am always happy when people feel something in and about my work. Perhaps the installation will open certain doors for reflection, or simply allow a slightly different perspective on the place. I would love for people to come away wondering how history is written: through what forms, by whom, and for whom?

Find out more about the MLF's first media action on 26 August 1970. 

Printemps du dessin

Created in 2017 by the team behind Drawing Now Paris, the first contemporary art fair dedicated exclusively to drawing, Printemps du dessin celebrates the diversity of this practice throughout France.

From 20 March to 21 June, by bringing together venues as diverse as sites managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux, art libraries, FRACs and art centres, Printemps du dessin brings culture to the very heart of the regions and responds to the Ministry of Culture's desire for a "Printemps de la ruralité".

Through exhibitions, workshops, conferences and meetings between artists and the public, the medium of drawing is deployed in all its forms, offering the public a close-up immersion in artistic creation. These nationwide events bring different audiences into close contact with the artists and their work at exhibitions and meetings. Drawing facilitates these encounters because it is a more direct and accessible medium.