Vernissage at the Opera: how Sciences Po artwork got us travelling “Anywhere out of the world”

The Festival des Arts’s second event brought us, this Wednesday 4th of February, to Reims’s majestic Opera, turned for the occasion into an exhibition hall. Terrific.

No other form of art as visual arts – photography, drawings, paintings – could have better captured Sciences Po students’ creative diversity and various interpretations of the theme proposed this year “Anywhere out of the world”. Inspired by Baudelaire’s eponymous poem, in French “N’importe où hors du monde”, staging the poet’s internal dialogue with his soul to which he proposes various destinations to go in order to escape life’s stifling reality, the student artwork exposed seem to converge on the theme of travel, expanding on ideas of space, frontier and possibilities.

“Out of the world” connotes in the first place a way out, a spring of fresh air at which artists quench their creative thirst, a window opened to a new poetic dimension and enabling us to rediscover the world under a new light. The magnificent setting of the Opera hall opened to us, added up to create a culturally rich atmosphere, full of meaning for our artists. The red and golden set was well suited to enhance the inveness and diversity of the artworks. In this context, the many photography pieces presented tried to capture the essence of travel and escape, which is a recurring motif throughout the exhibition. Madeleine Leddy’s shot of “Liza”, her younger sister seated, focused reading a children astronomy book, sort of crystallizes this dream of “outside”, of an inaccessible Ideal, to pick up on Baudelaire’s terminology. At the vernissage, Madeleine tells us “She didn’t strike the pose, it all seemed very natural and I liked how the light filtered through the window so I told her “don’t move!” as I grabbed my camera and took the shot.”

Other artworks rather picked up on the “Anywhere” part of the theme, taking daily life and their surprises as a subject of interest. The idea behind many creations, like Ryan Seghier’s series on departure representing views from a train and an airplane, our most common modes of transportation, as well as Julia Sisto’s “Intimates”, a heart-warming series of friends memories, was to portray life as it is, without further embellishment. This down-to-earth approach does not fit less our Baudelairian theme, for imagination is our only way to transcend plain reality and make of our human lives what we want them to be, through wise or daring creative strokes.

So then my poor soul, no matter where we go, as long as it’s out of this world!

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