You might think that a swarm of giant insects had taken possession of the white hut, behind the “île de la Pépinière”, on the “Etang de Clermont”. Oversize insect abdomens swarm inside the cottage covering the walls and the floor. The reality is quite different because these hymenoptera are born from recycled bike tyres. It is by turning and cone-rolling hundreds of these old tyres that the artist Julie Maquet created this installation which, according to interpretations, refers to the animal, the plant, but especially to the wild. Far from the manufactured parts from which she derives her raw material, the work rests on a subterfuge in harmony with the surrounding landscape: like the Hortillonnages, it questions the boundary between urban and natural space on a site that is wild but fashioned by man.

Born in 1990, Julie Maquet graduated from the school of Beaux Arts in Angers. The notion of toil, accumulation and repetition is at the heart of her work, where systematic processes frequently return to transform everyday objects into precious materials. As a result of effigies of nature that are singularly aesthetic, only the gesture of the artist reactivates, not without ambiguity, pieces with the appearance of a trophy.