 Large drawing created by Isaure Brunel, Giuseppe Caccavale, and Théo Etrillard, École des Arts Décoratifs-PSL, April 2024 |
The Conference of the Birds, Isaure Brunel, Giuseppe Caccavale and Théo Etrillard, École des Arts Décoratifs-PSLAs part of the exhibition When the Mirror Remembers the Trace, the Musée d’Art et de Culture Soufis MTO presents a work created by students from the École des Arts Décoratifs-PSL. This large drawing was created in April 2024 before the museum’s inauguration, in collaboration with the Art Mural et Poétique des Espaces studio at the École des Arts Décoratifs-PSL, a place of intellectual, creative, and artistic abundance for over 250 years. The entire project, both in its preparatory phase and in its final creation, was carried out within the museum. The artists drew inspiration from the architecture of the place, as well as the decorative details of the museum. To create this work, the artists used exclusively natural materials and techniques, such as graphite drawing, pigment transfer on Spolvero paper, pastel modeling, and Sgraffito scraping. These traditional techniques are reminiscent of those used to create frescoes in Italian Renaissance buildings. This drawing on canvas is a tribute to a monument of Persian Sufi poetry. The Conference of the Birds (Mantiq al-Tayr), also translated as The Language of Birds or The Canticle of the Birds, is a work written in 1177 by Farid al-Din ‘Attar, a central figure in the Persian Sufi literary tradition. This long poem of 4,500 couplets tells the story of the hoopoe bird, who serves as a guide to the birds of the world embarking on a journey toward the Simorgh, a mythical bird and symbol of the divine. The journey is a mirror in which the reader is invited to contemplate the reflection of their own soul, like the thirty birds who reach the end of the quest. Image : Creation of the mural, April 2024 Photo ©Eric Faton
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