CeCiL's Box by Guillaume Barborini

With its CeCiL’s Box project, Cercle Cité welcomes creations in one of its windows on rue du Curé. This project aims to present varied and original interventions to the public, and is also a way to support local creation by offering visibility to guest artists. These interventions are visible 7 days a week, day and night.

The 27th intervention, entrusted to artist Guillaume Barborini, is entitled "Les mains-ruisseau" (The stream-hands).

Élisée Reclus commenced his histoire d'un ruisseau (History of a Stream) in 1869 by comparing it to the history of infinity. Today, these words are shrouded in doubt, with the turbulence of the world creating a tension between them. On a certain level, it is this tension that inspires the exhibition.

The idea is to enter into the infinite or dying movement of streams, to slip our hands between the flowing water and the stone being smoothed. Then, in this place between the water and the stone: to let the hand invent its manner of being. To let it act and be acted upon.

Hands that sift water and are wrinkled in turn by the water. Hands that grasp a stone or two and roll them like a torrent, from the cupped palms to the fingertips. Phalanges actively sculpting by attrition, slowly wearing away by touching, fashioning the shingle but which are also fashioned by it as it thickens the skin and hones the gesture.

Between water and stone, learning the work of streams like a little absurdity and like an almost plausible narrative; just as hand-pollination is currently practiced in China. Undertaking the work of streams with ambiguity, like setting about a neo dead-end job or engaging with a desirable alternative, catching one's breath on the riverbank, on the crest of the racing world. In the simplicity of one or two gestures, the exhibition is thus about this damaged world, work that inflicts violence and is violent to the worker, and perhaps about the delightful, recharged murmur of a breakaway.

We invite you to meet-up with the artist in front of the CeCiL's Box on Thursday October 13 at 12 p.m.

Share your images on Facebook and Instagram : #cecilsbox

Discover the publication accompanying Guillaume Barborini's project by clicking here.