Born from the reflection surrounding the creation of his work Le veilleur d'au jour nuit, the artist Estelle Deschamp worked the technique of spun wax, an ancestral practice abandoned in favor of more modern techniques. The project «À cire perdue» also brought together other artists such as Lauriane Tresserre and Bétaranger Laymond around the work Shedevil’s, and Aglaë Miguel with the association Haran Urbel.
Forging links between past and present
The tradition of mourning wax dates back to the Middle Ages. The funeral candles served as ephemeral offerings to the deceased, embodying their presence in the world of the living. Estelle Deschamps' universe is inspired by these simple materials and the symbolic force they represent. The artist re-examines these ancient know-how and savoir-être through creation and the link she makes between the past and the present. By renewing the dialogue between mourning wax and the contemporary world, his work aims to be a link, at the heart of the transmission of rites of passage between life and death.
Artist based in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Estelle Deschamp was entrusted with an artistic research residency by the Coop association. Working with a multitude of materials that she assembles, accumulates or stacks, the mixture of textures, colors and techniques offers an original work. The artist rightly points out that the development of science and technology is less due to a learned elite than to anonymous people from working-class backgrounds, such as craftsmen and workers. It is this last dimension that she explores through the work of spun wax. From images from the collection of the Pyrenees Museum of Lourdes and exchanges with the team of the Benedictine candle maker of Urt, in Belloc (64), she recreated and operated for the first time in a long time the spinning machine.
“Lost wax was an important step in my creative process through collective practice, which joins my interest in vernacular and artisanal knowledge.” Estelle Deschamp
Perspectives, sharing and mediation
Alongside Estelle Deschamp, the Creuse artist and graphic designer, Aglaë Miguel is interested in craft cultures and has been passionate about mourning waxes since 2020. Currently in residence with the Haran Ubel association, which works to promote Basque culture, she was invited by the Coop Association, whose objective was to cross the looks and techniques of the artists.
The interventions of Lynda Legendre, medium, educational practitioner in Integration of archaic reflexes, as well as those of Xavier Kerexeta, ethnographer at the Gordailua Conservation Center, in Irun, completed this experience with a spiritual and heritage approach to mourning wax crafts and funeral practices.
About the association Coop
The Coop association was born in 2013 in the Basque Country and becomes a contemporary art residence outside the walls under the leadership of its director, Julie Laymond. What she calls her «rear base» is located at the Joangi guest house in Uhart-Cize. The objective of the association is to support emerging contemporary creation in the territory and to make it shine on the national or even international level. A true open-air laboratory, it is above all a question of supporting an experimental approach to young artistic creation, by producing original, in situ works that dialogue with the history of the territory, its traditions, its beliefs.
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