For the Journées du Patrimoine (Heritage Days), take a stroll through the capital and the departments of the Paris region on the weekend of September 20 and 21, 2025, to discover incredible museums, churches and institutions that are rarely open, or hidden and surprising spots, through guided tours or events that are often free of charge. We're heading for Essonne, with its beautiful rivers and rural landscapes, but also its curiosities, especially in Milly-la-Forêt!
Hidden in the woods is Le Cyclop, a monumental sculpture designed by Jean Tinguely and Nikki de Saint Phalle in the 1960s. A true homage to Greek mythology, this fascinating creation is over 22 meters high, and depicts a jolly-faced Cyclops, with a wheel as its only eye. Made of metal and concrete, it features numerous mechanisms and machines in motion, for a captivating visual and sound spectacle.
A fine testimony to the work of these two artists, who were a couple at the time, which combines kinetic art, sculpture and architecture. The work includes an air duct from the Centre Pompidou and a huge tongue-toboggan that falls into a small water-filled basin.
22.50 meters high and 350 tons of steel... Le Cyclop is a monumental sculptural work of art that takes pride of place in the woods of Milly-la-Forêt (Essonne, Île-de-France). It was created by Jean Tinguely with the help of his wife Niki de Saint Phalle and their artist friends (Bernhard Luginbühl, Rico Weber, Daniel Spoerri...).
2025 marks the centenary of Jean Tinguely's birth. The cultural and artistic program devised by François Taillade, director of the Association Le Cyclop, combines the history of Cyclop's construction with the contemporary creations of the guest artists.
These poetic and political works, some imagined by artists in residence at Le Cyclop, will bring together sculptures and performances. From these works will flow fluids, smoke, gestures and even words committed to our world, its environment and finally... the sound of birds to give voice to those who offer re-enchantment.
Metal, wood, blown glass, the movement of machines and bodies, songs and cries will herald this resounding anniversary: Æterna Flux.
The year 2025 celebrates the centenary of Jean Tinguely's birth. The cultural and artistic program devised by François Taillade, director of the Association Le Cyclop, combines the history of Cyclop's construction with contemporary creations by guest artists.
These poetic and political works, some imagined by artists in residence at Le Cyclop, will bring together sculptures and performances. From these works will flow fluids, smoke, gestures or even committed words about our world, its environment and finally... the sound of birds to give voice to those who re-enchant the world.
Metal, wood, blown glass, the movement of machines and bodies, songs and cries to herald this resounding anniversary: Æterna Flux.
Right from the pathway leading to Cyclop, the sounds of "Aztec death whistles", enough to wake the skeleton, set the tone for this anniversary exhibition. Jaguar*, who has just graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts d'Aix-en-Provence (ESAAIX), imagines this introduction as a passage through disorder in which we can transform reality and invent new temporalities. She will give a performance on Saturday May 17 at 8.30pm, taking the audience into other worlds, other dimensions. Jaguar likes to blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional, "to conjure up atmospheric stories of molecular rabbits and cave dogs, of encounters to be fabricated, made possible by magical acts".
Swiss artist Bernhard Luginbühl (1929-2011), one of Jean Tinguely's dearest friends and a major contributor to the creation and construction of Cyclop, will present Boss II. It is the cornerstone of this anniversary exhibition, an additional link between the heritage character of the Cyclop site and its activity as an art center. Boss II pays homage to the friendship between these creators, who were at the origin of the construction of this collaborative masterpiece, which today allows new artists to express themselves.
Antoine Nessi* composed the work "Nourrice", a long, sculptural body in half-organic, half-industrial metal with a strongly political ring, distilling a whitish, milk-like liquid. It could be an allegory of a new social body caught in the vice of an agri-food machine that sucks in, swallows and rejects the bodies, animal and human, necessary to its functioning, both those who produce and those who consume, where both are caught in the same deformity.
This work was produced with the support of Casa de Velázquez.
Walking through the woods of Milly-la-Forêt, Haena Yoo*'s eyes and hands came upon several pieces of wood, trunks and stumps, which she then hollowed out to create molds. In collaboration with the Verrerie d'art de Soisy-sur-École, she created sculptures incorporating pieces of blown glass. Her installation combines wood calcined by the melting of glass - the mold thus becomes a work of art - and blown glass. In the latter, the artist's secret macerations of medicinal herbs rise up in a wisp of smoke as soon as you approach them.
Denis Savary is invited to replay a performance created at Cyclop in 2013, "Étourneaux". It's a piece intimately linked to the propagation of "Ursonate", a guttural, syncopated four-movement sound poetry by Kurt Schwitters. Jean Tinguely himself paid tribute to this extraordinary artist in Le Cyclop. With the help of the Chanteurs d'Oiseaux, Johnny Rasse and Jean Boucault, Denis Savary appropriates the rhythm of the "Ursonate" and restores it through the whistling of starlings, a performance to be seen and heard on Saturday June 21 at 8.30pm.
This work is now part of the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques (Cnap).
Swiss performance artist Pamina de Coulon* writes texts which, as she puts it, "are not meant to be said, but to be read". Her performance work is militant, feminist and ecological, engaging her body, her voice, her flow and her thought, which sails in a trans-disciplinarity, on the complexity of the world, the universe and the hierarchy of knowledge, the better to overturn this hierarchy. On Saturday September 27 at 8:30 pm, she will present a work in progress on her new performance "Fire of Emotions: Maledizione".
EVENTS TO REMEMBER
Season 2025 from April 5 to November 2, 2025
September 27: performance on September 27
* artists in residence in 2024 and 2025 at Cyclop.
Dates and Opening Time
From September 20, 2025 to September 21, 2025
Location
Le Cyclop
Le Bois des Pauvres
91490 Milly la Foret
Prices
Free
Official website
journeesdupatrimoine.culture.gouv.fr
