A colorful journey for the CH de Créteil
Leopoldine Roux
2022
Léopoldine Roux offers the Centre Hospitalier Intercommunal de Créteil (CHIC) a colorful, contemplative and spatio-temporal experience in the form of paintings created from old black and white postcards revisited with touches of color, as well as a painting from her Cosmic Trip series. These large-format paintings were designed for the corridors of two CHIC departments, the Ambulatory Surgery Unit (UCA) and the Acute Geriatric Unit (UGA), to accompany the passage of patients and caregivers. In a spirit of co-creation, the artist organized two creative workshops with some thirty CHIC caregivers, who took a break to color reproductions of old maps in Léopoldine’s style. These works were framed and hung alongside the artist’s own.
A project in partnership with Resah.
Sur la plage de mon imaginaire – Benoît Labourdette
15 October 2023
Color Composition
15 October 2023Echappade – Léopoldine Roux
L'oeuvre de Léopoldine Roux
Echappade is a soothing journey through time and space.
“For this project, I’m starting from my Postcards series, which revisits places from the past century through touches of color, using nail polish and hairspray.
I propose to start with old documents (photos, postcards) from Créteil and the surrounding area, which, once enlarged, I will paint over. My aim is to create a colorful journey through time, where the eye is seduced by the history, colors and shapes scattered along the corridor. Using old documents from the life of Créteil, Echappade would be a meeting of past and present, and a questioning of our anchorage in time.(…)
Dressing the walls of a corridor to better capture the time of a moment, to better live the moment.
Beyond questioning our anchorage in time, using old images also helps to create socio-cultural links between the different generations who rub shoulders at the hospital. Echappade would be a vector of intergenerational social ties, between patients, nursing staff and visitors. In this sense, artistic integration becomes a collective work of art, reassuring because it supports discussion and daydreaming. The hospital is a place where all generations come together, and I want to create an imaginary link between their past, your present and our future.”
Echappade is a painted reverie for all.
Workshops with caregivers from Créteil Hospital
In the spring of 2022, Léopoldine Roux offered two workshops to caregivers, giving them the opportunity to paint sketches on black-and-white reproductions of postcards of Créteil.
The workshops, initially conceived for patients, were eventually organized with caregivers from the two units involved in the art project (the Ambulatory Surgery Unit and the Acute Geriatric Unit). In the context of the hospital’s crisis, it seemed important to give them this attention, this time dedicated to them, and this opportunity to create and color together, at the heart of their departments and during their working day. The approach is the same, a collective one that allows “through exchanges, to reflect collectively on what is an artistic approach in a hospital environment”. These artistic workshops at the heart of the hospital also aim to “encourage Echappade to take root within the CHIC”.
Around thirty participants took the time for a poetic break and, guided by the artist, applied touches of color to these old black-and-white postcards of their town, to give them another look. Each person chose an enlarged postcard and applied their own little touches of color, using different-colored nail polish and Posca markers.
“Use your imagination, your appetite for color”, encourages Léopoldine Roux.
Installation of works at the Créteil Hospital
During the summer, the works of Leopoldine Roux and caregivers were installed and the project inaugurated. The artist explained her approach and described the creative process, which was fueled by exchanges with the establishment’s professionals, and her work on the notion of passage. From the colorful rains to the mimosas in bloom, these images of the banks of the Marne also salute the memory of people who have passed before, in these corridors and in general.
This inauguration is an opportunity to reconnect with some of the participants, such as the caregiver Léopoldine remembers fondly: “For 20 minutes, you didn’t touch anything, then all of a sudden you let go!
A caregiver also testifies: when she saw my framed painting hanging in the corridor, “I didn’t recognize myself!”.
Hospital management hailed the opportunity for caregivers to spend a creative moment together, a bonding experience that for once didn’t revolve around a patient’s well-being, a moment of sharing and the chance, by hanging their creations, “to make their workspace their own.”
Patients and professionals alike will be able to travel back in time to the city of Créteil, in an aesthetic, gentle and colorful way.”
