Cormus

A pile of tangled, long, blonde hair on a dirt floor with rock wall in the background.

An inside view of a building with stone walls, showing hanging strands of fiber or wool illuminated by natural light.

An ancient stone building with arched windows and columns, featuring a wooden-beamed ceiling. There are cream-colored, furry objects and green plants in the foreground.

A person watering plants inside an old stone church with large arches, high windows, and hanging sheep wool decorations.

A close-up of a woven green hat placed on raked sand, with a large, matted, blonde, dreadlock-like hair extension or wig hanging down.

Display of long, light-colored wool fibers hanging in a rustic stone and brick space.

Subject: An artificial, scented underground garden
Installation: A group of sculptures in the Romanesque chapel Materials : Sisal fibre and plants (Scolopendrium ferns)
Scent: HUMUS by Paul Guerlain
Year: 2023 — Maladrerie Saint-Lazare chapel, Beauvais

An inaccessible work and a living stage set, Cormus is a botanical hydra. With its roots in the depths of the barn, the half-animal, half-plant chimera has emerged to settle in the shaded, cool and sacred setting of the chapel. In evocative organic forms, its first fragile shoots have colonised this new space, offering a mystical scene to be contemplated from afar, behind glass, the better to appreciate the preciousness of this birth.

Beyond the obvious link of their shared plant fibres, the continuity of thought that unites these two works seeks to honour the interdependence and the relationships between the underground world — blind and invisible — and the world of light and visibility, which we know and appreciate far better. Though apolitical, these works nonetheless aim to raise awareness of soil preservation and of the value of the life it holds.

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