EXPOSITION “TRACER LES PARCOURS, SAVOIR SE PLACER…” D’AURÉLIA GUY

About

The Aspet Tourist Office website – featuring the garden and exhibition hall – welcomes visual artist Aurélia Guy!

The exhibition ‘Tracing Paths, Finding One’s Place…’ is an installation situated at the crossroads of contemporary art and the humanities, between observation and pastoral practice and artistic practice, and the writings of pastoral movements to map out a pastoral heterotopia (according to Michel Foucault) that seeks to find its bearings in the landscape amidst living creatures and alongside the herding dog. A collection of tapestries and a felt cape, presented here, are the result of fieldwork: walks through the summer pastures of Cagire, Escalette, Gar, Bentaillou, Urets, Formiguères, Gérac and Val Louron… encounters with shepherds, farmers and shearers; the collection of stories and traditional techniques; and the shearing and harvesting of wool from flocks that have transhumed and come down from the Pyrenean mountains.

This raw material, worked by hand – harvested, sorted, washed, carded, combed and felted – becomes the medium for a dynamic cartography of wool, collectively shaping the relationships between humans, animals and territories.

Each piece of felt is both a physical archive – through its material and geography – and a sensitive cartographic space capturing movement within its landscape: that of transhumance, animal movements and the journeys associated with pastoral practices during the summer grazing season in the Pyrenees.

The choreographic dimension of the pastoral and artisanal gestures in this creative research emerges from walking – walking with the sheep and engaging with the topography – as methods: surveying the landscape in all weathers, charting a course, guiding the flock through its rugged terrain, falling into a rhythm, a breath, a presence, knowing how to position oneself between the dogs and the sheep, walking, walking, seeking shelter, walking – but above all, ensuring they eat well!

The mountains become a space for the expression of life, of the gesture of care, of the path, of the sheep track, where attention to living beings is expressed through forms of movement shared between humans and non-humans, between body and matter, all of which forms a choreographic score.

By combining pastoral practices, cartography, textile art and transhumance, Aurélia Guy explores how traditional practices—such as protecting flocks and adapting to nature—shape the ways in which we move through landscapes and live amongst living beings.