A stroll through the city of Nîmes, to discover the multiple faces of illustration.
“Go back to basics and promote illustration with all its forms and all its supports”this is the ambition that Margot Arrault and Sarah Dubois have given themselves, with the fourth edition of the Nîmes s’illustre festival which has just opened its doors and continues until July 7, with four exhibitions for the first time completely free.
A banquet to taste the illustration
Illustration invites itself to the table with a banquet! The famous Nîmes festival invites Sète chef Micky Backam and illustrator Eva Roelofs for a colorful summer banquet. A cultural and artistic experience. Sunday June 23, 1 p.m. at the Hôtel Dieu, 25 rue Jean-Reboul. €25, €35 solidarity rate.
Like the faces of Pierre Jeanneau which illustrate the posters, the proposals take several different directions, all brought together by meticulous care of the hangings. The Carré d’art hall hosts the exhibition “Énergies despairs”, which was shown for the first time at 104 in Paris. The project was designed by the architects of Encoreheureux, curators of the French pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2018. With the illustrator Bonnefrite, who worked from data facts from the Anthropocene, they evoke the climate crisis.
Walk in a contemporary landscape
On wooden racks, back to back, there are two images, one in black and white evoking the current catastrophe, the other in color prefers the initiatives, creating a contemporary landscape. With an immediate line, between caricature, poster and demonstration slogan, the disappearance of bocages, the artificialization of soils, the melting of frozen soils and the blossoming of microforests, the preservation of peasant seeds or the development of local currencies collide. .
Change of atmosphere with the “Flora & Fauna” project by Swedish comic strip artist Emelie Östergren, at the La Serre café in the Pablo-Neruda center. The exhibition was born from a meeting with the publishing house Hoochie Coochie, then from a crush on the artist’s very particular universe, colorful and full of finesse. For the festival, she presents a series of abundant and sensitive original plates. “I imagined a kind of fairy tale, with a sad and dissatisfied child, who is going to go into the forest. We don’t know if it’s reality or a dream”, explains the artist. Over “this struggle”he will meet people and dive into himself, discover himself.
At the Hôtel-Dieu, which becomes the festival’s HQ as projects progress, Nîmes stands out and welcomes the duo Alexis Jamet and Manon Cezaro for a rich and sometimes confusing exhibition, but ultimately reflecting the work of this hyperactive duo , which multiplies projects, residencies, commissions… The diversity that the festival defends is summed up with this exhibition “Touche à touch”. Each project seems a new beginning, with a taste for the blur of the airbrush and especially for objects, which sometimes tell the story of identities better than faces.
The walk ends with the “Campaign!” project. The festival had planned to take over the electoral panels after the European elections for open-air exhibitions. The dissolution changed the situation. But the posters created following the call for projects from the Associated Agents finally found a place on the gates of the School of Fine Arts, in the courtyard of the Hôtel-Dieu and at the Spot. Around fifteen artists created political posters, but not political ones. Each with their graphic paste and their universe delivers their personal message, an invitation to tolerance, procrastination, positive thinking or… the release of a crocodile in the Jardin de la Fontaine!
