Sculptures à Souhait / San Francisco

Le projet, c'est:

Sculptures à Souhait - SAN FRANCISCO est un projet de l’artiste Cécile Pitois. Cette première étape consiste à réaliser une étude pour des propositions de sculptures dans l’espace public dans la ville de San Francisco.

Wishful Sculptures

Critical and poetic considerations of the city

Since the 1990s, through her various creative artworks in France, her studies for the city of New York, a series of projects in Saxe-Anhalt and three new pieces for social housing projects in Brussels, the artist Cécile Pitois has been developing an entire thought process focusing on notions of the city and public space. Her sculptural creations, titled Sculptures à Souhait—Wishful Sculptures—are based on invented, fictional tales that fire the imagination and encourage new readings of the given location and new types of social appropriation. The resulting artistic gesture can be likened to an offering made to the city. At the same time this mark of generosity—this gift—requires a form of ritual and social exchange.

Where can you see a Wishful Sculpture ?

Les p'tites Soeurs de l'Atomium à Bruxelles: Parc Wannecouter, Laeken

Le Refuge des Rêves à Bruxelles: Rue De Wand, Laeken

Requiem pour une étoile à Bruxelles : Rue De Wand, Laeken

La Fontaine des Amoureux à Tours, Place Beaune-Semblançay

As a first step, Cécile Pitois follows a pragmatic and intuitive process that leads her to canvass a given area in order to capture a powerful feature or determine a work angle before developing it further, extending and refining this guiding thread through a series of investigations. For this, she bases her approach not only on documentary research but also on encounters that give her an opportunity to glean information about the location, its history and its social interactions. Gradually, through the inhabitants’ intersecting perspectives, elements emerge and their significance becomes obvious to her.

"Never doubt that a group of thoughtful concerned citizens can change the world,

indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead

The ritual dimension

With each of her works, the artist invites the city dweller to “share a ritual inspired by the historical, social and cultural context. This ritual dimension implies a dual experience, both personal and collective, of time and place” and offers each of us a way of experiencing space and continuing, in our own way, the tale’s narrative, whose text is printed on a plaque placed near the sculpture. The sculpture and the text, placed in relation to one another, thus become inseparable and connect to form a single work of art. Social appropriation is at the heart of the artistic work developed by Cécile Pitois.

The Sculptures à Souhait thus contribute to the creation of new sociabilities and to the construction of a new urbanity.

A traduire: Et la suite de l'histoire, c'est quoi ?

Dans un second temps, il s’agira de  développer ces projets afin de produire des éléments, dessins, photomontages, maquettes et de les montrer sous forme d’une exposition personnelle avec l’édition d’un catalogue. Puis dans un troisième temps, de finaliser une réalisation d’un des projets si la volonté politique et communautaire croise celle de l’artistique. Il s’agit essentiellement d’une réflexion sur la place de l’homme, « l’être » individuel et collectif, dans la ville.

PRESS: