Lélia Demoisy at Domaine de Chamarande: an exhibition exploring forest narratives — our photos

And what if the forest could have its own memory? At the Domaine départemental de Chamarande, in Essonne, the forest becomes material, memory and a testing ground with Récits de forêts, the solo exhibition by Lélia Demoisy to be unveiled from 10 May to 30 August 2026. Between sculptures, installations and landscape interventions, the artist occupies the orangery, the park and the estate’s spaces to probe the connections between contemporary art, the plant world and living beings. A graduate of the Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Lélia Demoisy continues there a line of inquiry into natural materials, traces and the contact zones between species.

Across Récits de forêts, Lélia Demoisy weaves a journey around the forest of Chamarande, the lost forest, the hybrid forest and the dreamed forest. Wood, fibers, organic fragments, hides, charcoal or animal tracks serve as touchpoints for works that recalibrate the visitor’s usual bearings. The exhibition foregrounds a forest conceived as a composite organism, traversed by competition, mutual aid, transmission and transformation. "What is too often regarded as mere scenery is, in fact, a system of relations, a knot of interactions", the artist notes on this point.

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The exhibition brings together works including Laissés sur la rive, Le Foyer, Les chairs froides, La trace de Chamarande, Cedrus deodara – Forêts futures, Cedrus deodara – Pollen & Charbon, Créature, and La belle mort. Some pieces rely on materials drawn from trees, roots, charred wood or plant scars to reveal phenomena often subtle: repair, disappearance, regeneration, or memory inscribed in matter. Lélia Demoisy also evokes this fragile boundary between what lives and what endures, which she calls "the murky zone between what lives and what endures."

Rather than adopting a blunt ecological manifesto, Récits de forêts invites a nuanced reading of the landscape and the ecosystems that make it up. The Domaine de Chamarande becomes, here, a crossroads between heritage, contemporary creation, and the observation of living things. By letting the works converse with the trees, the traces, and the materials of the site, the exhibition opens up a broader reflection on what the forest preserves, transforms, and passes on.

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