Cécile Raynal: Sculpted Encounters

For over thirty years, Cécile Raynal has developed a practice shaped by encounters with others. Rather than confining her work to the studio, she sets up temporary studios in places rarely associated with artistic practice—prisons, hospitals, convents, care homes and even cargo ships. There, she invites the people she meets to sit for a sculpted portrait. As she works, conversations unfold, bringing to the surface stories, memories and images that become part of the creative process and inform the resulting sculptures.

Sculpter la mémoire provides a compelling insight into this process. The film follows Raynal over the course of a week as she sculpts the portrait of Pierre Rolinet, then aged 98, a French Resistance fighter and survivor of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. As the portrait gradually emerges from the clay, Rolinet recounts his experiences and memories, revealing the intimate relationship between conversation, memory and the act of making that lies at the heart of Raynal’s practice. The 52-minute documentary was awarded a 2025 Étoile de la Scam.

The film will be screened several times over the course of the three-day event, with each screening followed by a conversation with Cécile Raynal.

The event forms part of Les Traversées du Marais 2026, a free cultural festival taking place across Paris’s Marais district. This year’s edition is dedicated to the theme of “Dialogues”.

Artistics — 16 rue de Turbigo, 75002 Paris
Friday 4 September: 3–6 pm
Saturday 5 September: 11 am–6 pm
Sunday 6 September: 3–6 pm

Exhibition: free admission
Film screenings and conversations: booking required — contact@artistics.com