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1. Charles Fréger, Extract for the photographic series "Les Souvenirs", 2019
Until the start of April 2024, the Alsatian Museum of Strasbourg present an exhibition titled "Memories of Alsace", which is the result of Charles Fréger's residency in Strasbourg and in Alsace, which took place for four years, between 2018 and 2022. While the Alsatian Museum and, at the time newly director Marie Pottecher was faced with numerous challenges, she decided to take a new road, and a new program to invite artists, in residency to create a new dialog and tradition between Alsatian Art, the collection of the museum and contemporary artist which will work in the region, so, what's the result of this first edition?
The residency
2. Charles Fréger, Point de croix, Realised by Elisabeth Dossmann, 2021, Embroidery with red cotton thread on linen canvas from a photograph, Photo: M.Bertola, Musées de Strasbourg
The residency of the French photographer Charles Fréger took four years, between 2018 and 2022, and during the project, the photographer will embarked on a major artistic project with the French region of Alsace as its traditions. While the work of Fréger was always inspired by the act of making a group, tradition and finding communities, he started his career by making photographs of communities and their costume around the world. All of this picture we're inspired by local events, illustrations, monuments and crafts, and in the case of this residency the construction of the Alsatian identity, constructed at the crossroads of French and German influence.
During four years, two Strasbourg cultural institutions: the Alsatian Museum and La Chambre (an exhibition and training space devoted to photography) accompanied the artist in his research and production, guiding him in his documentary research and in his discovery of the territory and its actors with the help of their network and their collection.
During those time, numerous cultural partners and associations were mobilized in Alsace, Lorraine, Franche-Comté, Baden, the Black Forest to create a vast project, resulting in a mix between photography, sculpture and ceramics. Each work is part of a series of works, which focus on a specific subject and construction of images, combining traditions and imagery through the vision of the artist.
To develop his work, the artist decided on a chronological framework encompassed by the war of 1870-1871 to the end of the First World War. This exact timing corresponds, both in France and Germany, to a period of construction and affirmation of a national narrative and identity by the use of new medias and chromolithographs, prints, illustrated newspapers, postcards and crockery thus became vectors for the dissemination of this message.
At the start of the residency, the artist was interested in a mythological construction of Alsace, between France and Germany. With the use of the Alsatian woman with the big black bow as an icon, but also the illustrator Hansi and the universe of the Rhenish carnival makes it possible to nudge these representations into the domain of the grotesque and thus demonstrate their tendentious dimension.
The result of the program and it's future
3. Charles Fréger, Les Alsaciennes, produced by the Lunéville-Saint-Clément Earthenware factory, 2019, Chromo-screen printing on earthenware, Photo: M.Bertola, Musées de Strasbourg.
The exhibition unfold in two different part and in two places, Alsatian Museum and La Chambre. In the historic part of the Alsatian Museum the artist present in a series of rooms the picturesque iconography of Alsace, as it developed at the turn of the 20th century, showcasing historical objects and artworks from the collection of the Alsatian Museum which are employed to raise questions of the image of Alsace as it developed from 1871 onwards, following its secession from France to Germany.
The second room of the exhibition is titled "Alsatian House", and it present several series by the artist, some of which take the form of everyday objects while evoking the presence of the memory of Alsace in the everyday life of the population at the end of the 19th century, a time when the image was disseminated via an unprecedented diversity of media.
This section is supplemented by two video pieces which highlight the impact of the war and the lost of Alsace-Lorraine on the destiny of individuals, and a series of photograph titled "Wedding in Seebach", which was Charles Fréger's first project in Alsace and where he highlights the diversity of Alsatian regional costumes as silhouettes, thereby acquiring a form of evanescence, as in a dream.
The next section presents many historical documents, objects and artworks which enable the visitor to better understand the approach undertaken by the artist during the four years of his residency in Alsace, but also the elements that inspired him and to which he refers in "Memories of Alsace" with four themes: national propaganda and hatred of the enemy, suffering and mourning, folklore and finally the silhouette.
The new exhibition space of the museum feature artworks created by Charles Fréger in response to images of Alsace and the Germans produced between 1871 and 1918 with references to the illustrators of that period (Hansi, Benjamin Rabier, Henri Loux, Henry Clod and Raymond de la Nézière) who generated an image of a rural and picturesque Alsace in contrast to a ridiculous or degrading one of the Germans.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Alsatian Museum
Date: 9.6.2023 – 1.4.2024
Curators: Marie Pottecher
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Alsatian Museum
23-25 Quai Saint-Nicolas
67000 Strasbourg
Phone: +33 (0)3 88 52 50 00