‘Carte blanche’ European Heritage Days 2020.
Cascade is a textile installation made from hand-painted organza. Conceived as a suspended waterfall, the work plays with the transparency of the fabric to create effects of layering, depth and light.
The structure, made of wire mesh and iron wire, allows the form to unfold across more than 4.5 metres in height.
The sculpture was first installed in the abbey’s ancient kitchens, where it seemed to surge through the windows. It is a frozen moment — time held in suspension.
The Abbaye de Saint-Paul, once a women’s abbey, is today a place where many eras speak to one another. Destroyed and rebuilt several times over the centuries, its various buildings carry the history of the site in watermark. Each space opens onto a world; each room is inhabited. Water becomes here an image of memory — a continuous movement, connecting what has disappeared to what can still be sensed.
Photographs of the installation were then projected onto the abbatial portal, the sole remaining vestige of the 11th century. This portal was the entrance to the former church. It once held three doors — two are still visible, the third can only be guessed at. Above them stood a rose window, the church’s principal source of light. The rose window is gone, like the rest of the building. But the wall speaks. It conjures an entire place.
Standing before it, the stones seem to recompose themselves.
Memory rushes in like a flood. This water surges from the central door toward the interior of the church that can no longer be seen. In its reflection, the ancient rose window appears — the one that once presided above the three doors.
It is the story of an interior movement reaching upward toward the flower: the memory of light.

Residency and ehibition with Claire Carroué (painting) and Amélie Davèze (photography). Thanks to Paul and Martine Morel for welcoming us to their abbey during the summer of 2020. Photographs of the installation : Amélie Davèze.