Cyano type

Hubert Crabières

26 May 2021

In partnership with five schools (from 4th grade through 9th grade), the MJC Rive Gauche, and families.

At the Pavillon du Jardin des Plantes (Rouen).

In the spring of 2021.

SUPERCOIN is a cultural program conceived by the Rouen metropole visual arts network and takes place over a month, in October 2021, at the Jardin des Plantes in Rouen. Each member invites an artist to think and lead artistic practice workshops for the young public.

The Centre photographique Rouen Normandie invites the photographer Hubert Crabières. In the context of the Jardin des Plantes, the artist uses the cyanotype technique to recall the herbariums of the time and calls upon the magician’s cape made by Méliès for one of his films. Thus, from plants gleaned in the garden, each group of children makes cyanotypes on squares of fabric, then assembled to obtain the cape of the costume, which is made by the older children. Playing with patchworks of printed flower images and various fabrics, the artist offers the children the opportunity to invent a costume and its cape that are thought of as much as visual explorations of photography as exhibition spaces to be worn.

The workshops lead to the collective realization of a large costume printed with photographic herbariums with the cyanotype technique, on small pieces of fabric and whole garment. The ensemble is then brandished by the children during the parade that closes SUPERCOIN.

As part of the “Supercoin” initiative led by the Normandy Region, the Rouen Normandy Metropolitan Area, and the City of Rouen through RRouen—the Rouen Metropolitan Area Visual Arts Network.