For this series Céline Marin collected images of the archives of Beausoleil and the Riviera, with images of flower battles, gardens and the Music Hall, as well as personal photographs...
For this series Céline Marin collected images of the archives of Beausoleil and the Riviera, with images of flower battles, gardens and the Music Hall, as well as personal photographs of a family who came from Italy and Spain to settle on the Côte d'Azur. The title, ‘Il y a des fleurs partout pour qui veut bien les voir’ (There are flowers everywhere for anyone who wants to see them), is borrowed from Henri Matisse who, from his room at the Hôtel Méditerranée, recounts the harmless war that adorns the Promenade des Anglais: the battle of the flowers. But beyond this great festive gathering, where all kinds of fantasies reign, this quotation is the perfect expression of the process of her iconographic research.
In ‘Les mots et les choses’, Michel Foucault refers to Lautréamont's famous phrase "as beautiful as the meeting of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table" to illustrate the way in which completely disparate things can be brought together by sharing a common space. Seduced by this vision, ever since Céline Marin envisaged that no rules would dictate in advance the ways in which she occupies her editing table. In all cases, iconographic research, which is at the heart of her practice, appears to be a way of breaking with the linear reading of history, giving rise to infinite combinations of the past with the present. Figures emerge as we go along, in the absence of scenery, inviting us to take a walk in a garden where everything becomes possible, surmountable: reality gives way to the realisation of the imaginary.