art
La Croix, Juliette Minchin, 2023
Juliette Minchin created in situ for the Abbey of Beaulieu-en-Rouergue. Arranged at the crossroads of the transept between the nave and the choir, the 28-meter-long cross-shaped sculpture responds to the Latin cross plan of the abbey. It is composed of 33 openwork steel panels covered with wax, where 363 wicks are lit in turn. Like a huge candle, the installation evolves over the exhibition and gradually reveals its metal structure. "The work is a real monolith of wax and steel. A mausoleum, a votive monument, perhaps also a cave. Inspired by a Sicilian silt, Juliette Minchin adapted the "diving" technique by which, minute after minute, millimeters after millimeters, the strands of the candles are covered with waxes and cooled, thickening, to use it in the construction of real wax walls. The metallic motif of their frame is a bouquet of elongated roses that pays tribute to the rosettes of the Abbey of Beaulieu. But patience! Because it is only at the consumption of this monumental candle that the structure is revealed. The wax sculpted the metal at the time of the dive, by the concretion of its drops. By melting, it becomes architectural garment, skin of the work, shroof of the cross. Like an hourglass, the work evokes the passage of time, the patient and meticulous repetition of the same gestures that form both immemorial techniques and disappeared rites. Like miraculous water, the molten wax will be recovered at the end of the exhibition in order to be integrated into the initial reservoir and the work will be reactivated during its next exhibition. The wax will return to wax, according to the reason of the eternal return, made to ward off the fears of those who remain, the fears of the after.: