This year we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the unique artistic proposal that is Champ d'expression. Contemporary artists are invited to a farm to live for a while and develop a research and creative work in situ, which stems from this experience. What better place than a farm to invite art to the countryside? What stronger symbol for rurality than the farming world, its activities, its buildings, and the way it shapes our landscape? Every year, farms open their doors to La Fourmi-e, welcoming artists and the public, and participating in this artistic and human adventure. In 2022, the journey from farm to farm will highlight farmers who are taking over or setting up a business at a time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to hand down farms. Farms, laboratories of mixed lives and shared experiences where the question of an agriculture of the common is raised, intimately linked to the future challenges of our societies. For this 10th edition, 7 artists, 6 farms.

La Fourmi-e goes back to the source of the adventure, where the artistic circuit laid the foundations of its identity, carried then, with determination, by volunteers, farmers and pioneering artists. To honour this early energy, the association decided to invite these artists from the first edition again. 10 years later, 4 out of 6 are back in the adventure, joined by 3 other artists, on new farms.

With Karine Bonneval / Bec'hed Cadoudal / Denis Colin / Carole Gilblas-Odin / Julien Lannou / Samantha Richard / Delphine Soustelle-Truchi

and the farms of l'épi qui chante / le Buis sonnant / Félice Branger / Ar Gozhker Bonen / Toazennoù Bro Fisel and Mel Bro Fisel / la Cocadrille

Planting yourself - Touching the earth
How to share a privileged moment with a plant, with a landscape? Plant time is slower than human time and our contemporary speed sometimes requires us to make an effort to stop, to settle down, to be-with.
The carpets, placed in places chosen to be with an individual plant or facing the more mixed landscape of plants, are an invitation to take this time. The immobility then opens the senses. Sounds and smells are also revealed.
With the mats "Se planter", we take off our shoes to remain standing, with our feet anchored to the ground. The idea is to feel a little of the immobility inherent in plants, half of whose life is spent in the earth. They were made in 2021, with balls of leftover knitwear found in recycling shops.
Those in the "Touching the Earth" series allow you, alone or in a group, to be placed as close as possible to the companion plants and simply sit among them.
To pay homage to the double activity of Adèle (sheep shearer) and Joseph (dairy cow farmer), I chose to use locally spun wool and to draw carpet patterns reproducing the stains of the dresses of certain cows. Their shape is based on the leaves of the plants to which they pay tribute. They were made during the Champs d'expression ar Gozhker Bonen residency, with undyed wool from the Petite Filature Bretonne and balls of mixed fibres from the Ti récup recycling centre in Carhaix.

Portraits of floors
The soil portraits are a new series of works based on the exploration of the soils of the different territories I travel. Chromatography is a method of separating substances in a mixture, used by some agronomists to analyse the quality of a soil in the field, outside the laboratory. This method uses a chemical principle similar to silver photography, where time and sunlight play a key role.
The portraits presented in the barn are those of soils collected in the vicinity of the farm, but also of 5 other places participating in the Champs d'expression project.

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