Cultures > Anne Houel, 2020

Sensitive to buildings, Anne Houel is interested in the evolution of constructions, their existence and their future. The observation of the territory and its history constitutes the starting point for the implementation of her sculptures, drawings, installations or interventions. For the 11th edition of Hortillonnages, she presents an evolving sculpture Cultures, the shape of which is halfway between housing and the horticultural greenhouse. Made up of a mobile, movable glass and steel structure, it contains, for a year, an architectural deconstruction from the territory in which it takes part. Installed in 2014 in the heart of the city, in front of the Artothèque of Caen, she invested the demolition of collective housing in Colombelles, a city located on the outskirts of Caen. she continued its roaming in 2017, invited as part of the Ronde, Meeting of metropolitan museums, by settling in the Square Maurois of the Antiquities Museum of Rouen. On this occasion, she lock away fragments of architecture from the city of Rouen, the shapes of which interact with the lapidary present in the Square. For its installation in the Hortillonnages, the work invests the deconstruction of a hut of hortillon. This cultivation evolves over time, giving rise to vegetation that is ruinous, and confronts the surrounding landscape. The sculpture is luminous at night, like a lighthouse  where culture becomes a curiosity, it calls for contemplation. Cultures takes a look at the geographic location of the Hortillonnages site, located in the heart of the city. Anne Houel questions here the integration of the urban environment into the natural heritage, the link between nature and construction, the wild and the domestic, the plant and the mineral.