Zébra3 accompanied Camille Lavaud in the design and production of a work presented as part of the 1% artistic program at the Lycée des Métiers Hélène Duc in Bergerac. It offers "Objectif Cocagne 2015" a journey through time that revolves around a fantastic story mixing the reality of the Lycée, real or fantasized historical facts in connection with the Chanzy barracks, and a projection into the future.

This story takes the form of a central fresco which features the high school students, their establishment, their workshops, and projects them into an adventure very freely inspired by the famous film “Back to the future”. The artist boldly mixes frescoes and graffiti, genre literature and cinema, high school life, anecdotes from the barracks, architectural elements, plant ornaments, but also landscapes of the region and personal mythology linked to memories of the city where she is from. .

This coming and going in the references is put to the benefit of an unbridled, jubilant narration, which takes the teenagers in an epic through time and the imagination. Moved by the fact that the high school students and the soldiers were more or less the same age, and must have felt the same emotions and desires to escape, the artist imagined an improbable and poetic meeting. The story also highlights the specificities and know-how of the four technical courses taught.

Camille Lavaud's abundant drawings, with lines close to engraving, evoke in their work a filiation with the techniques of illustration before the war, but are resolutely contemporary and of great formal freedom.

The main work is composed of a 19 m long fresco cut into 7 distinct elements, installed in such a way as to constitute a course which crosses the walls of the school. Its installation begins at the entrance of the school, then punctuates a path that goes from the square to the technical workshops. The fresco is printed on a glass support. This encapsulated printing technique on glass was chosen in order to be able to integrate the work lightly into the architectural space of the school. It makes it possible to generate transparency in Camille Lavaud's drawings, to let the gaze cross. It will also produce a subtle play of light, colored drop shadows, and allow double-sided reading playing with the notion of time travel.

This main fresco will be accompanied by four coats of arms characterizing each of the workshops. The technique of enameled sheet metal, traditionally used for advertising signs ensures great durability to the artistic installation while echoing the teachings delivered in high school.

The four coats of arms will create an identity for each of the four technical education workshops, mixing fantastic story and techniques at work in each of them. These coats of arms will be available in woven badges to be ironed on the work coats of high school students and teachers. They will thus constitute a sign of recognition and belonging for the different sections of the establishment.

In addition, for mediation, a paper edition will take up the illustrated story in a light form intended for high school students and users of the establishment.

Agent: Zébra3
Co-contractor: Camille Lavaud

Project management: Zébra3
Sponsor: Aquitaine Regional Council
Dimensions: fresco 1900 x 200 cm, 4 coats of arms 80 cm in diameter each
Materials: Impressions on glass, enameled sheet metal, iron-on woven badges 1000 ex. , paper edition 900 ex.

Delivery February 2016