Suspendues

After a visit to Maubuisson Abbey, we began a dialogue about the life and legacy of the Cistercian nuns who lived there for six centuries.

During our first readings, we were surprised by the contemporaneity of the mystical discourse of which these women were the main virtuosos. The writings of Cistercians such as Beatrice of Nazareth or Madeleine of Flers speak to us above all of sensitive and bodily experiences, which, if we detach them from their religious context, retain all their significance.

Metaphor and allegory flourish in their poetic style and constitute a permanent attempt, without seeking to conceal their limitations and inadequacies, to say the impossible. Their language, by emphasizing the importance of the body and of feeling, the importance of metaphors and allegories, and the non-duality of body and mind, will irreversibly change the way we think and write.

These innovative literary experiments opened the way to "thinking differently", "feeling differently" and "living differently". In literature and philosophy, authors such as Simone Weil, Edith Stein, Julia Kristeva, Henri Bergson, Georges Bataille and Robert Musil have echoed these ideas. But they also resonate within each and every one of us, giving us an insight into the fantasies, anxieties and desires inherent in all existence.

Based on the principle that art can give form to an idea by communicating an emotion, we want to replace the nuns' bodies with those of the spectators, leading them too towards an approach that is more spiritual (intuitive) than reasoned, at the crossroads of the intelligent and the sensitive.

The pieces selected here can be described as "temporal objects" in the sense used by Husserl: "Objects endowed with an intrinsic movement that matches the movement of the viewer's consciousness". Whether physical, visual or sonic in nature, the works' internal movements create a temporality that matches that of the nuns as much as that of the visitor, taking the latter into a different state of awareness and perception. This is not a journey through time, but a journey "through" a time that creates images. Far more than illustrative or metaphorical, these images are the daydreams of the nuns that persist within the walls of the abbey, giving us an intuitive understanding of their world.

We want this scenographic tour to revive the sensitive memory of the Abbey site, by connecting our own lives with those of the nuns, so as to create a dialogue between them.

The exhibition is divided into four sets of works that resonate with editorial content drawing on literature and philosophy: The body (work: Les mariées), space (work: Horizon négatifs), time (works: Ligne de fuite and Nuits Blanches), language (works: Mots silencieux and Guerridae).

The bodies of the nuns free themselves from their materiality to become tools and places of incarnation, of spiritual transport, of intense emotional states linked to the divine. Also the pieces of the installation "The Brides" maintain a circumstantial relationship with the ground. Their bases are fragile. Like the nuns, it is in the sky, the beyond, that they seek a hold.

"...the soul has become foreign to the world. Its familiar universe no longer has any meaning and yet God, hiding himself, finds itself as if suspended in the void" Teresa of Avila. Thérèse d’Avila.

Suspended between heaven and earth, their intrinsic movements, visual and sound, speak to us of the "beyond-body". Inside each sculpture we can see images of human mouths. The sounds they emit reach us through small loudspeakers placed on the branches whose shapes recall the postures of abandoned, tortured or ecstatic bodies. Songs, prayers, incantations, anger, supplications or tears blend into an indistinct and enveloping rustling.

Lisa EINHORN pursues academic research focused mainly on cultural history and gender studies. She is also a director within cultural structures, at the crossroads of research and the dissemination of knowledge.