Cecile pitois

Wishful Sculptures Critical and poetic considerations of the city Since the 1990s, through her various creative artworks in France, her studies for the city of New York, a series of projects in Saxe-Anhalt, three new pieces for social housing projects in Brussels and a recent monumental sculpture in Vitry sur Seine, the artist Cécile Pitois has been developing an entire thought process focusing on notions of the city and public space. Her sculptural creations, titled Sculptures à Souhait—Wishful Sculptures—are based on invented, fictional tales that fire the imagination and encourage new readings of the given location and new types of social appropriation. The resulting artistic gesture can be likened to an offering made to the city. At the same time this mark of generosity—this gift—requires a form of ritual and social exchange. These artworks within public space offer new anchoring points in the fragmented field of urban reality. The urban myths they spawn express a feeling of belonging to a specific location, no matter what the viewers’ culture, history or differences may be, while also providing a detached view via a critical and poetic approach to the city. The Sculptures à Souhait thus contribute to the creation of new sociabilities and to the construction of a new urbanity. Hervé-Armand Bechy, public art theoricien https://www.cecilepitois.com Tours, France