The ‘communal laundry house’ of ‘Lasdouts’, near the town of Gondrin
in the South-West of France, is where I created a temporary installation in stoneware
ceramics.
In this place I could
emphasize different sensitivities I experimented with in the last years. This
installation is also a reflection on the place itself and on the mediating role
art can have.
This building for washing
clothes and textile fabric is interesting enough: it is built on a spring, and
consists of a square building with a circular pool in the middle. A door opens
to the east and to the west, as these are the directions of the dominant winds.
Somehow this washhouse is a small sanctuary of ordinary life: it is a stunning
place although it served a daily and humble routine.
As a response to the place I
made six clay structures reminiscent of the textile fabric touching the water
and moving in the wind. The hands that washed the clothes may have gone, but
the memory of them doing so remains, like a gesture.