EXHIBITION 21 October to 15 November 2026
Une datura sous l'oreiller
Site-specific installation by Louise-Margot Décombas
Curation and text: la collective glitch (Zélia Bajaj & Chloé Bonannini)
Artistic direction: Nathalie Borowski - Hubert Rivey
Opening open to everyone on Wednesday 21 October from 17:00 to 19:00
Inside the Square des Batignolles, strange creatures have taken up residence in a greenhouse. Beneath this glass shelter, the works of Louise-Margot Décombas seem to discreetly watch over passers-by, unless they are spying on them, waiting for evening to set themselves in motion.
Their presence turns the Kiosque into a place of hybridisation, on the edge of the bedroom, the garden and the laboratory. At its centre, organic and everyday forms merge, distort and change colour to give birth to new entities. At dusk, the creatures awaken: the plants breathe or emit a glow, soft surfaces bristle with spikes, and objects change scale as if to assert their subjectivity. Faced with this fantasised nature, it is hard to know whether our mind is playing tricks on us or whether we are dreaming with our eyes open. Can we trust this hybrid furniture to find refuge in it, or should we remain on our guard?
The three sculptures by Louise-Margot Décombas blur our reference points while forging a material and emotional relationship with the objects around us. From one work to the next, the furniture becomes shelter, body or organism, bringing to the surface, behind customary uses, unexpected forms of life. The works invite us to consider everyday objects as active and familiar presences, acting on the space and on other bodies. These entities then seem less to inhabit the greenhouse than to develop their own world there, both intimate and autonomous.
Recalling a dream or a childhood memory, Une datura sous l'oreiller extends this dreamlike and strange atmosphere: a flower from the garden has slipped into the intimate space of the bedroom. The pillow, associated with sleep, memories and daydreams, suggests that moment when the boundaries between what is lived, imagined and remembered become porous. A nocturnal and toxic flower, the datura is associated with hallucination and disorder. Nicknamed 'witches' herb', it also evokes empirical knowledge of plants, passed down on the margins of institutional knowledge. Like the works in the exhibition, it brings to the surface, behind the ordinary, a hidden life charged with feelings and memories.
About:
Louise-Magot Décombas graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Paris and the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon. She lives in Paris and works at La Cyberrance in Romainville. In her artistic practice, she stages narratives that reflect an attachment to everyday furniture and incorporate living spaces drawn from both the intimate sphere and public space. In her installations, which regularly combine sculptures and photographs, she seeks to bring out the feelings and memories that run through them. Her research focuses on the diversion of standardised habitats through individual appropriation, as seen in residential neighbourhoods, working-class towns and seaside resorts, as well as on the outdated yet ordinary forms of outdoor furniture.
With the support of the City of Paris and the support of the Fondation des Artistes.