Sylvie Auvray series of brooms – made of ceramic, vegetable fibres, fabric and metal – reflect the sideward gaze cast by the artist over the everyday dimension in order to highlight the potency of the object. The bestioles that live inside them subtly provoke the domestic space, bringing malice and play into the nooks and crannies where things usually lie still.
Her broomsticks became a series of necks, some very long and others very short, holding up these mocking faces in glazed terracotta. Heavy and all too lifelike, almost ‘uncapturable’, they need nothing but a corner to stand up straight, with no call for a base. They are like the waiting – or suspended – elements, a sect that preaches purity, perhaps to make more room for their dances and trances. Or perhaps they swallowed Legba, the Voodoo godhead, compared to the devil by certain anthropologists, who subtly shifts the order given to objects, leading to chaos. [Excerpt from the text by Sarah Holveck]
