{"id":132,"date":"2017-04-01T23:22:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-01T23:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/?p=132"},"modified":"2026-06-17T23:22:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T23:22:50","slug":"jordane-saget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/jordane-saget\/","title":{"rendered":"JORDANE SAGET"},"content":{"rendered":"

JORDANE SAGET \u2013 THREE CHALK LINES TRACING THE OUTLINES OF A CITY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 2017 \u2013 2336 words<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BIRTH OF THE LINE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was the starting point of your artistic journey?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started these lines without any artistic intent, so without feeling like an artist. That was five years ago, on paper, with very fine lines. After two years of experimenting at home, during a somewhat complicated period in my life, those around me encouraged me to go for walks. But I had never learned how to walk: why would I go outside? Wondering what I could do outdoors, I thought I would reproduce what I did indoors. I was rather reserved and above all didn't want to disturb anyone, or for anyone to think that anything bad was going on. I chose chalk for this, thinking that by working on the ground it would disappear very quickly without bothering anyone. So I started drawing on the ground and on walls, before, after six months, an artistic perspective emerged. I realized that there was an interaction between my work and people, and I began to ask myself the first questions about the city, erasure, the ephemeral nature of my drawings\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did you choose the line as your motif and decide to draw three of them? What determines its thickness?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The line is eight millimeters thick, the thickness of crushed chalk. Graphically, I have no formal training; I didn't draw when I was younger. I liked geometric shapes in the style of Vasarely, and I would reproduce straight lines, triangles, and squares in the margins. I was looking for a kind of mathematical magic formula to make it beautiful. When I returned to it ten years later, I set aside the straight line and moved towards the curve, which is free and unpredictable. This idea perhaps stemmed from my practice of tai chi chuan, which plays a central role in my work. But how to explore this idea? I started by manipulating two lines before realizing that my work was missing a dimension, a third dimension<\/em>, which gave rise to the third line. I understood through this gradual reflection that I had found a subject that I could explore for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is your street work planned in advance or spontaneous?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before, I didn't really know when to stop. There's no rule; it can depend on the location, whether the frame is already defined or not. I also adapt to the weather or the people I meet. Talking with someone for thirty minutes or the sun setting can also play a role. The dominant lines are due to the speed, which slightly offsets the third line, giving my work a kind of choreographic feel. At first, I started with the dominant lines before filling in the rest, but the subway changed everything, and now I can alternate between the two. Indeed, I never knew how much time I'd have on the subway before being stopped, but if I was, the drawing still had to be finished. It taught me to work very quickly, whereas a large mural on the ground can sometimes take up to five or six hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE CITY AND ITS SPACES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you envision the city as a space?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I'm continuing my street art work, but today I want to open a new chapter in my journey by drawing in people's homes. After wandering around, I've wondered how the city is divided into surfaces: ground, walls, and windows. What I find extraordinary about the window is that it's only a few millimeters wide, yet it separates the outside from the inside, the public from the private, the street from the intimate. This reflection on the window and on the city will change my perspective on my work. People might call me to draw in their homes, and I'll be entering their private spaces. It will be a photographic project with my lines as a recurring motif.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How will you proceed?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I'm going to use Meudon white, a very fine chalk powder that disappears if you touch it. Mixed with water and applied to the glass, it stabilizes as it dries. It was previously used to clean mirrors. This will also raise the question of street art, since my work will be visible from the street even though it was created indoors. One might wonder if it still qualifies as urban art. It will remain street art because it will be free, and I'll be going to people's homes all over Paris. The recipient will have a very fragile, potentially ephemeral piece of art, but one that, if left untouched, can last for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What impact has photographing your artwork had on your work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has drastically changed my way of working. Now, I almost visualize the photograph before creating the mural. The image brings something else to my work, and I consider that there are now two works: the lines and the photograph. Indeed, it's not an archival image: sometimes I don't take a photo because I know it won't work visually, or that it's not justified. However, I always choose the location based on the lines rather than the possible frame. I've drawn so much on sidewalks or manhole covers that I'm not going to photograph them, but the lines can have their place there, at the heart of the street and the flow of passersby. I want to see if people react to them or not, if they walk on them when a very slight detour would be enough to avoid them. I would love to study these behaviors like a contemporary artist, and that's why I feel like an experimenter or a researcher in my street art. I am interested in the meaning and the experience lived by the viewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So your relationship with places has changed?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very beginning, I was looking for places to draw. Now I prefer to focus on quality. I'm starting to understand that what happens in the street takes time. Just because they aren't spectacular doesn't mean stories aren't being told. In the beginning, when people talked to me about art and explained that there were people who seemed ready to die for it, I didn't understand. Gradually, I realized that art is a wonderful gateway to discovering the universe, discovering oneself, and discovering others. You can experiment enormously, and that's how I see this project related to windows: a new realm of possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does this differ from your other forms of work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I try to reconcile the different uses I make of my drawings. I believe that even if the lines are the same, it's not necessarily the same work. When I'm working in someone's home, I draw on my experience with outdoor spaces and spatial planning to consider how the person moves and interacts with them. But I'm also interested in creating furniture designs. This very minimalist work is more graphic than my street art, which is more experimental. The street art has given the drawings a very physical curvature, shaped by the shoulder or hip joint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CHALK, A FRAGILE AND GRAPHIC MATERIAL<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chalk is a unique material, doubly ephemeral due to its intrinsic fragility and the temporality of Street art.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That's what I thought as a novice. From experience, I can say that chalk doesn't fade as quickly as all that. While it lasts three to four days on the ground, I've realized that the concept of fragility and ephemerality doesn't apply to walls. If left undisturbed and the wall is sheltered, it holds up very well. I appreciate this dual temporality of a material that is both extremely fragile and, under certain conditions, can last. When I met Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, he explained that some of his angels were ten years old. So I sometimes find myself passing by some of my first murals, like the one at the top of Rue Tombe-Issoire, which has been there for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In two and a half years, I must have produced over nine hundred murals. People tell me I'm everywhere, even though I now work mostly on the ground and less on walls. It's precisely because the chalk holds up and the murals are still there. They age, but they don't completely disappear. At first, it pained me to see them fade, and I thought I'd come back myself to erase them. Now I find them magnificent, and I've learned to analyze them to understand how the rain has fallen on them, or how people have touched them. From now on, a large part of my work will focus on this theme of erasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Could the graphic aspect of the lines be linked to a mathematical obsession, like the drawings of MC Escher?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very beginning, it's true they were intertwined, but that's no longer the case at all. I wondered why I necessarily wanted them to follow one another, trapped in a kind of mental framework that took me a year and a half to overcome. You could imagine them plunging inward and emerging at the other end of the canvas. I love Escher's work, and in my drawings you find a mathematical aspect, but not a rigid one: rather, an ordered disorder. I see my lines as a kind of DNA, like human beings, all made of the same thing and yet all different. In this respect, they still surprise me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is striking about the lines is their clean, almost primitive, graphic appearance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At one point I wanted to make them more complex, but now they're very simple, even though I sometimes create variations. People, perhaps based on their own background, have compared them to all the primitive art forms around the world: I've been told they evoke Aboriginal, Amazonian, even Celtic art. I think this primitive aspect and simplicity give them a universal dimension. Many tell me that the lines soothe them. I've reflected on this idea, and I believe that everywhere in the city, wherever your gaze falls, there's a demand. There's always a meaning or a request. If they soothe, it's perhaps because they don't demand anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LINES AND THE PUBLIC: BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you ensure the long-term sustainability of your urban work?  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People often ask me why I don't draw in cities other than Paris. I would if I were traveling, but creating a non-verbal dialogue with the locals, as I've managed to do here, takes a tremendous amount of time. You have to become sufficiently immersed in their daily lives for intimacy and a sense of sharing to develop. If I were to draw elsewhere, I would have to start all over again. Conversely, I might be identified too quickly. But this relationship is what's truly interesting to me. I want to continue what I've established here, especially since I feel a connection to Art Nouveau. My arabesques fit well within it, I know the city, and I enjoy the dialogue with Parisians. Initially, I wanted to be all over Paris, but I don't want to add lines to neighborhoods where others are already showing signs of age. As in any relationship, there need to be moments of respite, and I don't want to overwhelm the situation. My wish would perhaps be to one day be able to perform with an audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do you interact with this audience?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It's amazing, some people recognize you and others know nothing about you. People are kind, they stop to compliment me, to say they've finally found me. That's also why I didn't sign my work at first. We often want to rush things, but the relationship to time is important. There are two dialogues that interest me: the one with the people I meet, but also the non-verbal one I create through the lines. The first interaction with my work was a boat at the Oberkampf station. Why not before? There needed to be a period of maturation, a time for appropriation, and the result was wonderful. From then on, people came to write inside, children came to color. So now I create spaces, like bubbles in the metro, to invite the public to interact. Graffiti artists have come to draw there, with a kind of mutual respect. The Meudon white paint actually appeared thanks to an interaction. Some graffiti artists must have wanted to tagged me, but lacking supplies, they came up with the idea of using their fingers to erase the chalk. After being surprised, I found it brilliant to draw with my finger and wondered how to apply it. Whiting (Meudon white) was the answer. These lines are mine, but in the street they belong to everyone and become a kind of collective artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lines also allow for collaborations with other artists.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The collaboration with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac happened quite naturally. The story goes that there was a spot in Al\u00e9sia where one of his angels occupied a magnificent location. I walked past it every week, thinking how I would have loved to draw there and meet the artist. One day, the angel was erased, and although I could have drawn on it, I didn't, out of respect. Following that, I met the creator of that angel. I would also love to work with choreographers, whether on dance or music.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JORDANE SAGET – TROIS LIGNES DE CRAIE QUI TRACENT LES CONTOURS D\u2019UNE VILLE avril 2017 – 2336 mots NAISSANCE DE LA LIGNE Quel a \u00e9t\u00e9 le point de d\u00e9part de votre parcours artistique ? J\u2019ai commenc\u00e9 ces lignes sans d\u00e9marche artistique, donc sans me sentir artiste. C\u2019\u00e9tait il y a cinq ans, sur du papier, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qgdesartistes.fr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}