Toute personne 2 - Tissage métissage (Every people 2 – Weaving, Intermixing)

Vincent Bécheau and Marie-Laure Bourgeois, Third Prize – 2012 call for contemporary creation

Vincent Bécheau’s and Marie-Laure Bourgeois’ monumental project Toute personne 2 mixes three dimensions of the Aubusson tapestry: the hanging tapestry, upholstery and the rug.

The project is composed of a tapestry cut in a U shape to raise up one part on the pattern of a door. It is a project with considerable dimensions: the total length is of 8 meters for 2 meters large and the door reached 2,80 meters. On the verticalized part, the back of the tapestry is also thought as in graphic terms, which is an integral part of the work. The weft threads are left long enough to be knotted in regular pompons. About 70 colors are necessary to realize this tapestry with complex calligraphic patterns.

Both artists get their inspiration in Robert Bonfils’ War Exhibition, illustrating the Allies’ victory after WWI, exposed during the “Expo 1925” at the tapestry museum in Aubusson, in 2012. From there on, they led a reflection on war, peace, the notion of border and the representation of the dialogue. Toute personne 2 showcases the double nature of the border, separating line declared by the States and trade areas flooded by individuals.

Leaning on the common etymology in French of “texte” and “tissue”, in coherence with war and border symbolism, both artists having chosen the multitude of writings as a pattern. It is the materiality of the writing which guided the work’s conception: the letters are only signifiers of the language universality; the characters are not the carrier of a message, which would have been written. Thus, the alphabets worldwide crosses, stands alongside and merges until the erasing of the writing, visible in close up but which moves on to a dense graphism from a distance, until the formation of a landscape.

The weaving was realized by the Atelier Catherine Bernet in Felletin. Begun in January 2014, the tapestry has fallen down the loom in March 2016.

Vincent Bécheau and Marie-Laure Bourgeois are artists, formed as DPLG architects. In 2013, they are laureates of the contest for the realization of a Resistance memorial in Saint-Etienne de Puycorbier and published the essay Glossaire du designer (A designer’s Glassary) (Publisher La Muette/Le Bord de l’eau). In 2009, they are laureates of the contest for the commemoration for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ecole Nationale de la Magistrature à Bordeaux. Their project “Toute personne” consists in the writing on the ground of the foreword and the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights between the Ecole and the Law Court. Between 2009 and 2010, they create and organize MONC in Bergerac, reflection led by about thirty artists on the relations between private and public spaces in the city.