The artist Roxane Borujerdi has been invited by the Centre d’art contemporain d’Ivry - le Crédac to design an art workshop and to work with a class of CM2 (Year 5 or 5th Grade) students from the Henri Barbusse primary school from April to June 2017. Following on from a research project that she began in Brazil in 2014, the artist proposes a series of workshops to the students, using bird watching as a starting point. After a visit to the Parisian cemetery of Ivry-sur-Seine accompanies by ornithologist Pierre Delbove, the students were able to observe the multitude of colours that make up the plumage of magpies, crows and parakeets. They then tried to reproduce as faithfully as possible the silhouettes of the birds in drawings, notably from ornithological plates.
In the following work sessions, the pupils reproduce the observed motifs from memory, switching from one medium to another on different supports. This memory exercise enables the children to give free rein to creative work tending towards a more abstract representation of birds, using felt pens, brushes and pairs of scissors. Each student’s birds gradually decomposes until they become a real personal graphic emblem, printed on a T-shirt. Like a flag or pennant, these textile prints, which the pupils wear in the school video, are symbols of each child’s identity.
This project is supported by the 3rd district of National Education in Val-de-Marne.