This work was created for the group exhibition "Parc et pics à l'Espiadet" in collaboration with the Pyrenees National Park. This project is a way of evoking the Payolle forest next to the marble quarry of Espiadet. I was impressed by the many dead trunks and branches when I went up there. For me, this was the result of a natural disaster, in the history of the quarry, this adjacent forest was used to make tools, means of transport for the marble blocks. In my research, embalming is a way to allow the passage to the afterlife but also to preserve and prevent natural decomposition. I chose mummification with a cotton cloth to keep the shape of the trunk and create a mortuary relic, a testimony of the past. This work is still in situ, in place for months, the embalming has evolved, the tannins in the wood, the miscropic organisms or the weather leave traces of their passage. Far away in the landscape, the work stands out, like a textural bug where the snow has forgotten to melt, inviting the viewer to question and walk.

 

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