At the Saint-Eustache church, Charlotte Simonnet plays on the heartstrings

How to create a link? What connects us? This is the question that has lived Charlotte Simonnet, winner of the Rubis Mécénat prize. With its installation Glimpse (in English: “take a quick look”), this young artist born in 2000 pays homage to the notion of community which permeates the Saint-Eustache church.

To materialize this attachment, the imagined work stretches and floats between two columns. These are connected by a rope made of stained glass and concrete iron : “It is the community,” explains Charlotte Simonnet, “the connection between the church and its inhabitants, this close union which guided the creation of my pieces. »

The revelation of a young artist

For the 4^e consecutive yearthe Rubis Mécénat prize grants a young talent the opportunity to benefit from the support of an exhibition curator to design a work, installed in the Saint-Eustache church. This fall, it's Stéphanie Pécourtdirector of the Wallonia-Brussels Center, who occupies this role. The commissioner thus established privileged contacts with the student in 5^e year at the Paris School of Fine Artsan institution where Charlotte Simonnet follows the teachings of the workshop of visual artists Tatiana Trouvé and Dominique Figarella.

A large collection of ex-votos

The project of the winner of the Rubis Mécénat 2024 prize started with a large collection from parishioners and visitors to Saint-Eustache. Artist's goal: collect items to make ex-votos. It is up to today's visitors to find traces of it by discovering the work.

Charlotte Simonnet took care to hammer these objects to give them the shape of copper plates leaving only a counter-form visible, before scattering them throughout five chapels in the church. Scheduled in the Les Halles district, in the heart ofSaint-Eustache churchthis presentation of the Rubis Mécénat prize offers an excellent punctuation to the exhibition devoted to arte povera, currently presented at the Bourse de Commerce.