In 2026, the Centre des monuments nationaux is taking part in the celebration of the Bicentenary of Photography and in the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the writer’s death at the George Sand estate in Nohant.
On this occasion, the photographer and artist FLORE is invited to take over George Sand’s house and garden with a new photographic creation designed especially for this site steeped in history.
Over the course of several stays carried out during a two years of residency, she walked through Nohant, allowing time and familiarity with the spaces to bring forth a sensitive relationship with the place.
Artistic Intentions
After nine years of passionate love, George Sand separated from Frédéric Chopin and set about removing every trace of her companion from Nohant. Paradoxically, this act of erasure has over time reinforced a sense of absence that still permeates the place today.
FLORE explored this tension between presence and absence. Rather than searching for material traces that have now disappeared, she draws on the possibilities of the photographic medium to suggest and evoke this ghostly presence. The images become visual echoes, silent resonances of what was ounce and persists invisibly.
Je suis dans des mondes étranges thus offers a poetic immersion in the emotional imprint left by two figures bound by an intense relationship, and in the vibrant memory that continues to inhabit Nohant.
EXHIBITION ROUTE
In the garden and the park
Some twenty large prints will be scattered throughout the park and garden of the Domaine, inviting visitors on a walk where evocative images of a poetic and friendly life will mingle with nature. They will thus prepare visitors for the immersion in the house, where the artist will offer a reanimated presence of Frédéric Chopin.
In the house
FLORE will occupy the interior spaces with a group of twenty-five works combining different techniques: silver prints, prints on gold leaf, prints on porcelain, silks, prints on lithographic stone, as well as old photographic objects, reactivated and reinterpreted for the occasion.
Her works will take their place within this fully furnished and decorated house, where every room still bears the trace of those who lived there. FLORE will install her creations as if she had settled there for a long stay, with delicate attention and deep respect for the spirit of the place, taking care to preserve its intimacy and soul. Like a familiar guest, she will slip her presence among the furniture, objects and memories, in gentle resonance with Nohant’s sensitive memory.
Visitors will be able to discover her works during guided tours.
BIOGRAPHY OF FLORE
A Franco-Spanish photographic artist, FLORE divides her time between her studios in Paris and in the Hauts-de-France. The granddaughter of Spanish political refugees and the daughter of the painter Olga Gimeno, she discovered photography on her own at the age of fourteen.
Winner of the Prix Nadar (2020), the Prix de l’Académie des beaux-arts – Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière (2018), the Prix Photofolies, Ville de Rodez (1998), and a finalist for the Prix Swiss Life à 4 mains (2020) and the Hariban Award (2017), her series are developed over the long term, often during travels, and have been acquired or presented by various prestigious institutions such as the Musée du Petit Palais, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy, the Musée de Picardie, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Musée Nicéphore Niépce, the Mémorial de Rivesaltes, the MMP+ in Marrakech, the Chopin Museum in Warsaw, at festivals, as well as at international art fairs such as Paris Photo, Photo London, Art Paris, Photo Basel, Fotofever, Marrakech Art Fair, Daegu Art Fair, and the Snif Art Fair in Osaka.
Through refined technical interventions in the laboratory, indeed as an alchemist, FLORE shapes as much as she restores the world unfolding before her eyes, creating unique images that move away from conventional photographic reality. She moves with ease from the oldest techniques, such as platinum-palladium or cyanotype, to the most modern, sometimes mixing them and physically intervening on the prints with wax or gold.
She defines her poetic and timeless universe as a political act, her way of positioning herself in the face of the “beam of darkness that comes from her time,” as G. Agamben says. FLORE is represented in France by Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière / Paris
PUBLICATION
An eponymous book published by Maison CF, in partnership with the CMN and the Chopin Institute in Warsaw, will be released at the time of the exhibition opening.
Born from the close collaboration between the artist and her publisher, the book will weave a sensitive dialogue between the images made in Nohant, the herbaria gathered and composed in the gardens, and Chopin’s handwritten scores written on site, all interwoven with short texts whose words bring the figure of the composer and the spirit of the Domaine into resonance.
A short story by Aurélie Razimbaud will open the narrative, delicately imagining life in Nohant at that time.
Price: €45 – 128 pages
FLORE : Je suis dans des mondes étranges
from April 18 to November 1, 2026
Maison de George Sand
2 place Sainte-Anne
36400 Nohant-Vic
Information: +33 2 54 31 06 04
www.maison-george-sand.fr
