Céleste Boursier-Mougenot sets the score in motion
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot is widely known for transforming ordinary objects into the unexpected instruments and revealing the musical potential of everyday materials and situations. For “points de suspension”, presented at Frac Normandie in Caen as part of the Normandie Impressionniste Festival, the French artist report combines sound and movement, taking place in the cloister and arcades of a former 17th century monastery.
For the “envolée”, the artist installs in the center of the courtyard a circular structure reminiscent of pavilions, structures that once gave life to public gardens. Eight swings hang under antique church bells and invite visitors to set them in motion. As the swings rise and fall, the bells follow their motion in changing rhythms that never repeat themselves twice. Boursier-Mougenot creates the conditions to emerge collectively. The installation exists entirely through the gestures of those who choose to participate, setting the conditions for strangers to play alongside each other.
Céleste Boursier-Mougenot: ellipsis Exhibition view, Frac Normandie, Caen, France, 2026 © Adagp, Paris 2026 | all images by Martin Argyroglou
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The swing itself carries a long cultural history, appearing in all cultures as both ritual and leisure, from ancient Egypt to the ornamental gardens of seventeenth-century France. Associated with renewal, transition and seasonal celebrations, this nostalgic setting becomes, in this case, a device for rethinking how bodies inhabit public space. The familiar act of swinging no longer belongs only to childhood. it becomes a way of synchronizing movement, sound and attention.
Beneath the installation stretches the “plage”, a 900 square meter field of crushed glass, whose glistening surface resembles a crystalline body of water. Reflecting both light and movement, here, French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot transforms the monastery into an ambiguous landscape that appears dry and wet at the same time.
a musical installation with the ability to play swings and bells;
A facility that invites people to stay together
The experience continues indoors with ‘cameraobscura’, where Boursier-Mougenot extends the optical principle of the camera obscura to the scale of an exhibition space. The entire outdoor installation is projected upside down throughout the gallery, while hanging swings invite visitors to pause beneath an inverted skyline. In this space, the sound produced in the courtyard becomes inseparable from the sight, connecting the two installations through a shared exploration of perception. The bells also shape the experience of the moving image, breaking down the boundaries between sight and hearing.
Throughout his practice, Boursier-Mougenot draws music from objects that were never intended to be instruments, revealing unexpected forms of resonance through everyday materials and situations. At Frac Normandie, his research includes architecture and the people who temporarily occupy it. Rather than asking visitors to complete a work of art through interaction alone, points de suspension offers a space where individual gestures accumulate into a shared experience.
The exhibition suggests another way of inhabiting public space, valuing curiosity and chance encounters, reminding us that such a setting can create the conditions for collective imagination, inviting people to stay in a place a little longer.
wooden swings are suspended from a circular steel structure
brass bells ring through the movement of the swings
