March 20 - December 30, 2013
CLAUDINE DRAI - VALERIE BELIN
Une spiritualité au féminin
Musée d´Art sacré, Dijon ; Musée du Hiéron, Paray-Le-Monial, France

exhibition release

In Dijon and Paray-le-Monial, the Museum of Sacred Art and the Museum of Hiéron, present a double exhibition of eighteen artists who explore with their feminine identity, the notion of spirituality. Distributed over the two sites, the exhibition is available in several themes that serve to illustrate the works in dialogue with the collections and the space of places steeped in history: Being-the-world (Rossella Bellusci, Claudine Drai) Spiritual Childhood (Nadia Sabourin, Isabelle Tournoud) Intimités a body core (Marjolaine Salvador-Morel, Mylène Salvador-Ros) Fenced Yard (Sabourin Nadia, Zoe Vida Porumb) The wake her (Amarante, Catherine Gfeller, Cécile Marie), Consumed by a burning fire (Tania Mouraud, Annick Roubinowitz) Attendance absent (Valérie Belin, Isabelle Tournoud) Transmutation (Valérie Colombel) The time of silence (Aliska Lahusen), light body and tears (Hélène Mugot) Terra Incognita (Carole Benzaken)

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Chosen to illustrate the theme of Being-the-world, the works of the artist Claudine Drai fascinated by their mysterious magic and a relative immateriality. Ephemeral architectures, her installations are designed and experienced as a "mental body" that is through an invitation to a journey within ourselves, within our sensations. Enigmatic silhouettes such arms outstretched, her sculptures made of paper fanning imaginary sensation wanderings, and take us to give their view they cross the invisible worlds, those of feeling, of the immaterial space. At the Museum of Sacred Art in Dijon, two chapels around the rotunda welcome two pieces of paper which one is destined to become a bronze sculpture. At the Museum of Hiéron are presented two paintings covered by a silk veil that alters the perception. Born in 2004 in collaboration with a perfumer, this work evokes the impression, and today still exudes its fragrance.

 

The artist Valérie Belin is a major figure in contemporary photography. Her works, presented at the Museum of Sacred Art in Dijon, in the thematic Attendance Abstebtes, is part of a series produced in 1996, following a commissioned work of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Calais lace that gives a free hand to her to photograph the collections. Strongly attracted by large lace dresses stored in boxes, she left there without building staging, and photograph the room to address the perspectives and obtain a view of the above, but not a diagonally. This depth gives the impression of being inside, closer to the dresses that are literally the body and are similar in effect absent presence to the women who wore them.

 

With nearly sixty works at both museums, the exhibition offers a feminine spirituality in a plural reading of spirituality, a sensitive search, which focuses exclusively feminine creations.