EXPOSITION "TRACER LES PARCOURS, SAVOIR SE PLACER..." D'AURÉLIA GUY

The exhibition %ABTracing Paths, Finding One’s Place...%BB is an installation situated at the intersection of contemporary art and the humanities, between observation/ pastoral practice and artistic practice, and the writings of pastoral movements to map a pastoral heterotopia (according to Michel Foucault) that seeks to find its bearings in the landscape amidst living beings and alongside the herding dog. A collection of tapestries and a felt cape, presented here, are the result of a field study: walks through the summer pastures of Cagire, Escalette, Gar, Bentaillou, Urets, Formiguères, Gérac, Val Louron... encounters with shepherds, herders, and shearers; collecting stories and gestures; shearing and harvesting wool from flocks that have transhumed and come down from the mountains in the Pyrenean massif.

This raw material—processed by hand, harvested, sorted, washed, carded, combed, and felted, serves as the basis for a dynamic cartography of wool as a material—a collective shaping of the relationships between humans, animals, and territories.

Each piece of felt is both a material archive—through its substance and geography—and a sensitive cartographic space capturing movement within its landscape: that of transhumance, animal migrations, and movements linked to pastoral practices during the summer grazing season in the Pyrenees.

The choreographic dimension of the pastoral and artisanal gestures in this creative research emerges from walking—walking with the sheep and engaging with the topography as methods: surveying the landscape in all weather conditions, charting a course, guiding the flock through its rugged terrain, falling into a rhythm, a breath, a presence, knowing how to position oneself between the dogs and the sheep, walking, walking, seeking shelter, walking—but above all, making sure they eat well!

The mountain becomes a space for inscribing life, the gesture of care, the trail, the sheep track, where attention to the living is expressed through forms of movement shared between humans and non-humans, between bodies and matter—all of which forms a choreographic score.

By combining pastoral practices, cartography, textile art, and transhumance, Aurélia Guy explores how artisanal practices—such as protecting herds and adapting to nature—shape the ways we move through landscapes and coexist with living beings.