“We only see clearly with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eyes,” wrote the father of the Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. It is the life of the writer who was also an aviator, postman, poet and philosopher that the new exhibition recounts. The Little Prince among men presented at Place Bonaventure until June 30, 2024.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry fascinates as much as his legendary character, The Little Prince. Between his birth on June 29, 1900 and his death on July 31, 1944 in a final plane crash, the French writer lived a hectic life, to say the least.
This is told to us through the 32 stations of this exhibition which we visit in around an hour and a half using an audio guide.
Ben Pelosse / JdeM
Take inspiration from the sky
The birth of his love for aviation at the age of 12, his relationship with his family, his adventures in airplanes, his travels, his writings, his career as a reporter, his accidents, the founding of aerospace, his novels and its disappearance are presented using objects, archive images, collages, films, and projections.
“It was the solitude of the plane that allowed him to become a philosopher and poet. It was surely in the great heights that he became a great author and that he thought of The Little Prince,” confided Paul Dupont-Hébert, who is behind this project created in collaboration with the Saint-Exupéry Foundation.
Ben Pelosse / JdeM
The producer says he is particularly proud of the precious artifacts presented; copies of extremely rare, approved and very precious artifacts from Saint-Exupéry’s flight logs. He says he was also moved by the film showing the wreckage of the plane in which he lost his life, which was only found recently, in the year 2000, in the Mediterranean.
And then, knowing that the little boy who inspired the author to create the mythical character that The Little Prince has become was the child of a friend from Quebec, it seems that we feel even more challenged and touched when We find ourselves in the immersive room. We listen to Saint-Exupéry’s mother talking to us about her missing son while projections bring the creator, his wolf, his planets, his Little Prince and the famous rose to life in turn.
Paul Dupont-Hébert hopes to take this exhibition to several cities in the rest of Canada and the United States.
For more information: https://lepetitprince.ca/
Ben Pelosse / JdeM
