“MEMENTO”

Inspired by the suspended works of Olga de Amaral and the maps used by the lacemakers of Le Puy-en-Velay, Pierre-Henri Beyssac & Victoire Camus conceived a lightweight paper marquetry, glued on edge and thus freed from its support to be suspended and contemplated from both sides.

Aware of the precariousness of wood as a material and the impact of its exploitation on the environment, they decided to create a work embodying the memory of endangered species, by extracting a graphic expression evoking their DNA. For this first piece, they chose white ebony, classified as a vulnerable species.The marquetry presents a series of hieroglyphs resulting from graphic research traced directly onto the wood veneers, in order to extract a network of points determined by the intersections of the grain. The resulting sets of points form constellations which, when linked together, reveal an alphabet specific to each essence.

In keeping with their approach, they chose to refrain from using wood and instead create a marquetry of recycled paper inlaid with hieroglyphs, then gilded with gold leaf on one side to accentuate its sacred character.

This remarkable work, at the crossroads of several skills, evokes the material of wood without using it, embodying a memento.