For this new cycle of Artists’ Residencies, Gaël Charbau invites three artists and one artist duo to explore the different aspects of the materials and savoir-faire of the maison Hermès: leatherwork for Matthieu Haberard, fine metalworking for duo Julie Villard & Simon Brossard, silk for Bianca Bondi, and crystalware for Linda Sanchez. At the close of each residency, a dedicated Cahier de résidence, jointly published by Actes Sud and the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, and featuring a rich selection of images, retraces the process of creation. In order to reinforce cultural bonds between each Hermès workshop and their surrounding regions, the works produced over the course of the Artists’ Residencies are exhibited in local cultural institutions. In addition to the workshops’ craftspeople, a broader public is thus able to discover the creations shaped by the artists through the craft skills and knowledge anchored in their region.

Artists’ Residencies in 2022

Since the start of 2022, Matthieu Haberard has been welcomed by the Maroquinerie de Guyenne in Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Born in Toulouse in 1991, Matthieu Haberard graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2016. His practice centres on the handmade, with technology placed at a deliberate remove. Drawing further inspiration from the world of childhood, he creates hybrid, totemic sculptures with a fantastical dimension, like the piece that he completed during his residency: Au fond ensemble is a monumental sword whose blade – rendered in leather – takes the form of a dragon’s tail, or perhaps its tongue. Endowed with a paradoxical suppleness thanks to its scales, which Haberard methodically sewed together using a leatherwork technique he discovered at the Maroquinerie de Guyenne, the sculpture was exhibited in summer 2022 at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design (MADD) in Bordeaux.

Artist duo Simon Brossard & Julie Villard are meanwhile exploring the skills of silversmithing at Puiforcat in Pantin, Île-de-France. Born in Créteil in 1994 and in Carpentras in 1992, respectively, the two visual artists met during their studies at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy and have worked together since 2016. Their formal vocabulary borrows freely from art nouveau, design, video games and science fiction to give form to strange sculptures based on industrial aesthetics, where the mechanical fuses with the organic. At the Puiforcat workshop, the duo are using hitherto unexplored processes and techniques to create new and unsettling forms that blend resin and painted brass. In a striking departure from the rigorous geometry for which Puiforcat is known, the artists draw out volumes that seem flexible, at times even crushed, revisiting their futuristic universe through the craft skills and knowledge surrounding silversmithing. Assembled with one another, these brightly coloured elements form long, articulated limbs that emerge from a suspended resin shell with decidedly fantastical overtones. Entitled Perform Puppet, the duo’s work is on display in Pantin in June 2023 as part of the Émergences Biennial.

Artists’ Residencies in 2023

In 2023, Holding Textile Hermès in Pierre-Bénite, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, hosts South African artist Bianca Bondi for her residency. Born in 1986 in Johannesburg, she studied at the Wits School of Arts in her home city before continuing her training at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. Her constantly evolving pieces centre on her materials’ capacity for metamorphosis, which she carefully manages and stages to offer a reflection upon environmental issues. Immersed in the activities of the Ateliers d'Ennoblissement d'Irigny (AEI), Bianca Bondi discovers the skills of dyeing and imagines an original take on tie-dye techniques. In her quest for vibrant colours, she is able to obtain a vast range of shades, sometimes in unforeseen ways, such as when rain that fell during a storm altered the materials as they dried outside. She creates cat-like silhouettes that she has encases in coloured fabric, with the shimmering appearance and delicacy of the materials’ weave lending a precious character to these feline mummies, which pay homage to the funerary rituals of ancient Egypt. In spring 2024, the public is invited to discover this group of sculptures, entitled Chrysalis, as part of an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon (macLYON). 

Artists’ Residencies 2024

In 2024, Linda Sanchez, who was born in Thonon-les-Bains in 1983, is undertaking a residency at the Cristallerie Saint-Louis in Saint-Louis-lès-Bitche, in the Grand Est region of France. A graduate of the École Supérieure d'Art d'Annecy-Alpes, she devises finely tuned processes, systems and mechanisms to create distinctive forms and objects. Refusing an authoritarian approach, however, she instead celebrates the freedom of her materials through a combination of experimentation and rigour.