Les veilleurs

With Les veilleurs (The Watchers), Aurélie Menaldo plays with the shop window as a type of space that contains, preserves, and allows for observation while simultaneously preventing access.

The installation comprises three wrought-iron elements and was created specifically for the exhibition space, taking into account its dimensions. The artist has previously used metal in public spaces, as in the installation Éole (Aeolus), a set of turnstiles transposed from the world of consumerism and supermarkets to that of parks and play (2016). Here, Menaldo works with metal using pre-existing forms that she repurposes and recycles: the ironwork elements were salvaged from window and balcony grilles, chosen for their ornamental shapes and potential for assembly.

The repurposing of architectural elements is a recurring theme in the artist’s work—as seen in the columns of the installation Lost Paradises, 2022. Here, the aim is to transform a security device protecting windows into a purely decorative element. The artist alters the object, taking it to another realm. Its function is no longer the same, no longer confining or protecting bodies: we are instead looking at window bars that are themselves enclosed. The object is thus no longer a functional defensive grille but an object of gaze, its role being to strive towards an absurdist poetics.

In her latest installations, Aurélie Menaldo employs a vocabulary that plays on the boundary between function, ornament, and spirituality. The title carries the ambiguity of the word “watchman”: guardian, saint, as well as security guard.

We could speak of these watchmen as urban relics in a secular dimension. The objective is to preserve the raw aspect of the material and the preciousness of the form.

This symbolic principle is found in the installation of burnt wood, Palo Santo (2025), and also in the work Entre-peaux (2025), a series of animal masks in latex and wax. These sculptures are displayed on the wall in a confined space. Neither hunting trophies nor potential disguises, each is studded with delicate wax tears. The close proximity of the body and the artworks accentuates the awareness of their fragility.

For Les veilleurs (The Watchers), Aurélie Menaldo explores the rigidity and solidity of materials as sometimes unacknowledged rules. Between fear and confinement, where protection is also separation, she questions our ways of creating architecture, the city, and society.