CIAC | Château de Carros
Rivers flow beneath our feet
Exhibition Past
February 8 to June 15, 2025
Opening Saturday, February 8, 11 a.m.
In a spirit of sharing and artistic dialogue, CIAC Carros has invited Eva Vautier, director of the eponymous gallery, to collaborate on an original exhibition: “Sous nos pas les rivières”.
The exhibition features works by artists from the CIAC collection and those represented or invited by the Eva Vautier gallery. This initiative is a natural fit for Carros, the gateway to the Parc naturel régional des Préalpes d'Azur, a protected reservoir of biodiversity where, as elsewhere in the world, the interrelationship between humans and their environment is more than ever in question.
At a time when the Third United Nations Conference on the Oceans is being prepared, the works presented, which are the result of poetic, radical and often committed approaches, bear witness to the issues involved in “taking care” of nature and the living world, and open up numerous avenues of reflection for thinking about art and our personal and collective commitment in today's world, for a liveable world tomorrow.
Between heaven and earth lies water
Eva Vautier, exhibition co-curator
Situated at the top of the medieval village of Carros, the 12th-century château housing the CIAC overlooks the Var valley. Accessible via cobbled streets lined with unspoilt countryside, this unique site invites visitors to take a contemplative walk. The path to the exhibition becomes an immersive experience: the view of the river and the effort of climbing to this height reinforce our vital link with living things.
Water is much more than just a natural element: it is essential to all forms of life and to the sustainability of ecological systems. Its preservation is crucial to the future of our planet. The ocean, nicknamed the “lungs of the planet”, produces much of the oxygen we breathe thanks to plankton, and regulates the climate, with its currents contributing to the earth's equilibrium.
The works - paintings, sculptures, photographs, sound installations and performances - question our relationship with water, a symbol of ceaseless regeneration. The artists express this vitality through creations in which water becomes the symbol of a ceaseless quest for biodiversity. Water ecosystems, as yet little-known, become material for artists, sometimes drawing on science, sometimes exploring their history. They all work on the world and its transformations.
The exhibition is spread over three floors of the château, with each level offering a different space for reflection.
On the first floor, in an intimate, introspective atmosphere, visitors are invited to reconnect with an archaic link to the earth through installations evocative of caves, where the songs of bats resonate, discreet inhabitants of these places essential to the subterranean equilibrium. On this level, a work crossing the staircase, representing the flow of water, can be seen on each floor from different angles, playing with light and movement.
On the second floor, water, the bearer of life, suggests vegetation and flowering in a veritable Garden of Eden that welcomes visitors. Flowers spring from a tap, others are flamboyant and even amorous. Lush terraces are bathed in sunset light, and imaginary plant creations fill the space. The exhibition, dotted with essential proposals, reminds us that simple actions can have a significant impact on our lives.
Continuing the tour, water becomes memory and metamorphosis, linking river, sea and ocean. Samples of the seas trace the horizon, and landscapes born of a gesture invite us into a meditative dialogue.
On the top floor, works question the temporality and fragility of natural cycles. A video installation evokes the house as a symbol of impermanence in the face of natural forces. A waterfall gushes forth with sound and poetry, enveloping visitors and transporting them to the very heart of the aquatic cycle, where the river takes its source, recalling the origin of all things.
Since the 1960s, artists have been expressing their concern about environmental degradation. Even then, these concerns resonate with even greater urgency today, in a geological age when mankind has become the main force for change on Earth.
Each artist takes a unique look at the human unconsciousness in the face of nature, in opposition to the one-sided view often offered by society. Some take a critical, political approach, sounding the alarm. Others prefer to explore a more introspective path, inviting us to look at nature differently, to reconnect with our intuition and our own essence, awakening an ancestral awareness of our connection.
The exhibition Sous nos pas, les rivières is not simply an artistic journey, speaking through a variety of media about the fragility of ecosystems. It's also an exhibition that calls us to reconnect with our roots, to re-evaluate our link with living things, and to understand that every gesture counts in preserving the Earth.
In this place steeped in history, where culture and the beauty of the land intertwine to the sound of rivers singing, Sous nos pas, les rivières is intended as an invitation to awaken. More than just an exhibition, it's an invitation to walk, climb, look, feel and let new paths open up - or rediscover ancient ones - to achieve a resonance between human beings and the environment.