Hidden Songs

Hidden Songs

Chants dérobés originates in ten chapters withdrawn from a book before its publication. Preserved but permanently removed from view, they are enclosed in ten box-shaped sculptures that evoke a safe, giving them a material presence while keeping them out of reach. This boundary between public and private feeds the project's dramaturgy: the sculptures hint at content deemed too personal to be made public, yet too precious to be destroyed. In a world saturated with images, where everything seems visible, Chants dérobés is a reminder that seeing does not mean knowing: like these silent chests, each of us carries a part of mystery within.

The Necessary Silence

Prototype

New Project

Works in Detail

Prototype

The prototype gives one of the ten withdrawn chapters the form of an object of memory. Its dimensions, close to those of a stack of letter-size sheets, maintain a link with the written word. The manuscript, placed between glass slides, rests in a white oak chest, itself enclosed in a heavy steel sarcophagus. An encrypted curse, screen-printed inside the wood, reinforces the archaeological analogy and deters any attempt at intrusion. Even without knowing the project's dramaturgy, one senses that the sculpture holds something. The line between base and lid is the clue: inaccessible content, whose unknown part opens a space for the imagination.

New Project

The new version of the ten sculptures takes up the principle of the sarcophagus in a compact form. Each withdrawn text is inserted into a block of linden wood on which the encrypted curse is engraved. This wooden core is placed in a steel chest marked with a sign composed from the symbols for silence in musical notation, which identifies the chapter and is the only clue to what it holds. The buried text is not content absent from the work: its inaccessibility, on the contrary, reinforces its presence. What remains withdrawn from view acts on what is visible and keeps the sculpture from being reduced to its surface alone. As in music, where silence belongs to the composition, its muteness becomes a force in its own right: an invitation to listen to what lies behind appearances.