ARCHIVES 2011 / The conservation-restoration workshop of the Ecole d'Art

Faced with What Slips Away:
Starting Again and Offering for the First Time

In the conservation-restoration workshops of the École d'Art of Avignon, damaged, lost works with stolen visibility are being treated. The questions on their constantly tormented life are revealed here with particular care given to the traces and their loss. So the restoration of the work is like a mirror held out to creation, and vice-versa. Gestures, organic elements, dust, paint, films, skins, performances: all the creation techniques and materials are concerned. The itinerary proposed to the public is like a journey through appearances, a stroll through a world of vacillations, of scenes and transfers between objects, bodies and glances, all peopled by absences, stories and signs based on which the references will gradually be constituted, the narratives developed. Two daily visits of the restoration workshops are planned during the Festival, and will be conducted by the school's students and, occasionally, by professionals from the art world, who will present their own vision on the subject.

Jean-Marc Ferrari, Director of the École supérieure d'Art of Avignon