Landscapes of Childhood

3rd July – 6th November 2016

Exhibition inspired by the creation of To the heart choreography Thierry Thieû Niang scenography Claude Lévêque.
Performance presented as part of the 70e Festival d’Avignon.

This new summer exhibition, born from a performing art project created by the choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang, faithful to the Collection Lambert, and produced by the Avignon Festival, Chartreuse de Villeneuve-lez-Avignon and the Collection Lambert.

This project showcases children from 8 to 18, living in Avignon, who have mostly never danced before, and who experiment with the body’s vocabulary, the meaning of a gesture or the outcome of an intention. They understand the difficult that occurs when a body is thrown off balance, staggers, falls, then picks itself up again.

Attending on a first workshops in Spring 2016, Éric Mézil, director of the Collection Lambert and exhibition curator, was bowled over by the relevance, fragility and truth of these children and adolescents ‘‘playing dead’’. They have undeniably become a unique community, able to question and challenge an established system. Their fragility and engagement speak of outbreaks, falls, loss and consolation.

Where exhibitions usually create diverse cultural and artistic programmes, which have resonance, Éric Mézil has chosen to stand the museum on its head and make this performance project the starting point to a major exhibition that extends in time and space the discernible shapes brought into play through the work of Thierry Thieû Niang and Claude Lévêque. The choreographer wants to involve in his project artists such as the singer Camille Dalmais, the author Linda Lê, the viol player Robin Pharo and the fashion designer Agnès b.

Therefore the exhibition’s aim is to have a stake in landscapes explored by the To the heart show ; namely those of committed young people engaged in trying out new things, trial and error, the learning process and all things possible; where we can break apart then get back together again, like these young people who are discovering the metamorphosis of their own bodies, their spirit and their place in the world.