Vestige

VESTIGE

We’ve all seen a similar image before: A dandelion, or a seedling, pushing its way up through the concrete of the city. Life asserting dominion over the built environment. Cast your mind back to the birds swimming the canals of Venice in the morning as the pandemic spread across the globe. Nature exists just off to one side, just waiting to come to the fore until humans and their world retreat a step. 

Are we really going to wait until the next catastrophe is imminent, sit back and watch as ivy grows over the ruins of the modern world, as it might in any good end-of-the-world disaster movie? Or do we instead throw open the windows of our minds, let the birds slip in, and watch as a maple samara drifts down to rest on the sill? Beginning that inner dialogue, nudging people closer to introspection… That’s the purpose of artist and jeweller Bénédite Séguin’s most recent sculptural work. And who knows? Planting enough seeds in our modern minds may drive action, create momentum, and fan the winds of change!

Still using her carefully crafted method, Bénédite Séguin creates metallic moulds of native plants she herself has picked in the wilderness. Galearis spectabilis, cypripedium parviflorum: these wild Quebec orchids are endangered; they have been harvested with the proper approvals in hand, to complete a project funded by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec… Ferns, too, because this greenery has survived for eons, and because it grows quickly. Carefully covered in a thin layer of wax, the freshly picked flowers are transformed into moulds in Bénédite’s studio. Into these moulds a mix of silver and copper, recycled from a local electrician’s waste, is poured. This patinated and oxidized alloy is known as shibuichi in Japan and, in the Vestige collection, it immortalizes the most fragile species of boreal flora; here, frozen in a pose reminiscent of growth; there, frozen in a pose evocative of escape, attached to bases made of concrete or recycled materials. 

While such an image is already a powerful one, we have worked together with the artist to take the message a step farther, with a photo shoot in the rubble of a destroyed (elementary) school at sunset. Here, the nonsensical landscape of antiquated becomes overwhelmingly beautiful. The colours stun. Chunks of concrete are strewn across the landscape with the timeless grace of the fine granite found on Charlevoix’s shores. Structures made of metal cable creep and crawl across the walls, like brambles or vines… Beauty, where beauty should not exist. The impossible-to-miss signs of humankind’s passage through the landscape…

Followed by the absurd sight of new fern shoots growing. 
A little farther on, a rare species, a bizarre robot perched on a fine network of roots walks like an automaton, and tries to escape this debris field. 

In an echo of this mise en scène, the same works are subsequently photographed in the studio, on a white background surrounded by demolition debris, again playing with the clash between human development and the preservation of biodiversity: A theme near and dear to the artist’s heart, one she explores across all her work as a jeweller. 

Joaillerie Amulette: 20 years of natural elegance