The celebration of the sardine strike of 1924 also includes an exhibition in the hall of Douarnenez town hall. The Rospordin textile artist Claudine Janik created embroideries which she placed in sardine cans. She made 100 to pay tribute to the factory women who went on strike 100 years ago. The title of his exhibition “Kant bœst a vo” refers to the slogan proclaimed by the strikers in 1924 “Pemp real a vo” (“five cents there will be”). Here, “100 cans there will be”, 100 cans of sardines for the 100 years that have just passed. “What moves me about this fight is that these are women. Women who lived in poverty. Women who dared and women who won. This echoes the current situation of certain women in certain countries. If they could, if they dared… but there are countries where they cannot even dare,” she regrets.
100 cans of sardines decorated with delicate embroidery
Claudine Janik admits that she had no idea of this page in Douarneniste history until 2019. That year, she discovered, by chance at a concert, a song by Gabiers d'Artimon about the revolt sardine pots. “Luckily, I was already recording them when they started singing. I have never been so moved by a song. For several months, every evening, I listened to her and found this emotion again. I then researched the subject and in 2023, I discovered Anne Crignon's book, “A Beautiful Women's Strike”. The emotion returned. That’s when I told myself that I had to create an artistic work on this theme,” says the woman who had never done embroidery but who chose this technique to tell her vision of history.
After 13 months of work, these 100 boxes lined with delicate embroidery reminiscent of the Breton costume were created. Usually, his favorite tool is shibori, a Japanese technique of resist dyeing by ligature on fabric. Some of his works borrowing from this Japanese art and linked to the revolt of 1924 are also exhibited.
I rock and pay homage
A century-old backdrop for a collaborative project
Facing the sardine cans, we find a collaborative work by Lopérec textile visual artist Paulette Patout. “In September 2023, I exhibited at Livraisemblable and visitors had the opportunity to participate. They chose a fabric and cut out a sardine. These sardines were so precious that I wanted to put them in cans. I had too many sardines so I made a second assembly, a school of fish version, which will be at the back of the stage in the Port-Musée auditorium where conferences on the strike will take place,” she says.
Coming from a lineage of workers attached to the defense of their dignity, she seeks, through her art, to “denounce the things that are not right”. “I rock and pay homage,” she said. The background used for his work exhibited at the town hall is a hundred years old. It is a mattress cover on which people of low status of that time slept: hemp mixed with oat husk. “As mice love oats, the canvas has period darnings that I wanted to respect.” For the pattern, she was inspired by a famous poster by Alain Le Quernec “with his authorization”, she specifies.
Practical
Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to noon and from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., and every Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to noon until January 6 in the hall of Douarnenez town hall. Inauguration at 11 a.m. this Saturday, November 16.
