This summer, the Domaine du Rayol takes you on a journey around the Mediterranean, through «Odyssea - Jardin possible», an exhibition of the Collectif Personne.
Nobody is a collective led by Laurent Derobert, author and artistic director, Gaele Flao, visual artist and Gaïa Bergelin, seed archivist.
During the summer of 2022, carried by the winds and the support of the Ministry of Culture (New Worlds), a team of song-gatherers, philologists and botanists, sails in search of the plants named by Homer in L'Odyssée. Aboard a sailboat, they reach the appropriate shores to collect seeds and stories. An odyssey in L'Odyssée, inspired by Homeric episodes of botanical interest and geographical theses by Jean Cuisenier and Victor Bérard.
From the Calypso thuyas to the asphodels of the Underworld, the collected seeds form a possible garden, that of the Odyssey.
Navigating in the wake of Ulysses to pick in situ the seeds of the flora of L'Odyssée and to publish it in fine as a collection of seeds seems more a bet on the gardens to come than a veneration of those of the past: Based on recent discoveries about the language of plants, they imagine a garden where, in the future, we could listen to the flowers of the Odyssey sing in turn the adventures of Ulysses.
While waiting for the plants to tell us the continuation of the epic of the man with a thousand tricks and his family, the artists propose an exhibition of botanical plates made in charcoal revealing the identified plants of L'Odyssée, an installation representing cartography, embellished with embroidery, the expedition, as well as an Ithaca earthen setting containing the precious seeds harvested.
Opening of the exhibition in the presence of the artists Saturday, June 1, 2024 at 11am, followed by a ritual sung around the olive harvest.