ROYAUME PAGURES: ELSA GUILLAUME

The adventures that Elsa Guillaume recounts through her sculptures and drawings are the promise of distant expeditions to the depths of the seas and oceans — a world before our world, when humans had not yet completely set foot on land. She thrives to help us discover or rediscover the profound depth of the abyss, which has become in our eyes as mysterious as it is unattainable.

Far from a dark dystopia, the artists borrows from the art of the fable to stage the small contemporary odyssey of a few valiant hermit crabs setting out to conquer another world. 

Regardless of the destination, whether it is towards a better place, a long-promised land, or a final crossing, it is at the heart of fictional archaeology, the romanticized memory of an ancient and forgotten kingdom, that Elsa Guillaume draws her dramaturgy. 

We can think of a curious animal as this intriguing crustacean to which she gives the leading role, a proud warrior equipped with sharp pincers and yet so soft and vulnerable, particularly in the time between borrowed shell homes. This beautiful image - the metaphor of the little king of the seas spending his life running from palace to palace - reflects the frustrated hero of our modern world in perpetual migration.