LES ERRANTES NATURELLES

Pacing along the pavements and exploring the nooks and crannies, the artiste Lise Duclaux paints a portrait of the wild vegetation in the towns and cities she visits. Drawings of plants and seeds create an inventory of patterns that deploy themselves and spread over a boutique’s window display. The shop front is hijacked to become an open air sketch-book in which the rhythm of the seasons and philosophical musings rub shoulders.

Forging poetic links with humankind’s individual and collective existence, Lise Duclaux transposes her observations into writing and the layout of sentences.

A revolutionary significance insinuates itself into the parallel drawn between the plant and human worlds. Unexpected nature bursting forth in towns and cities raises the questions of our conflictual relationship with it. From Brussels to New York via Liège, the artist has observed that only a few types of plants grow in the impoverished soils of big cities.

Braving the frontiers of green spaces controlled by park-keepers, plants embody beings and ideas. We are invited to become aware that the environment is not something to be controlled, but a vibrant place to be lived in and understood. Beneath our feet lies a nature that responds to ecological upheavals and outmatches us by virtue of its force.

Whether marginalised or outcast, free-growing but frail vegetation survives and the seeds sown by the wind are a means of future propagation. Keep your eyes on the cracks between pavement slabs running in front of town houses and you will see !