At the Ladies' Table | Cécile Raynal

At the Ladies’ Table is an installation by contemporary artist Cécile Raynal that brings together portraits of women from the artist’s entourage, friends or people she has invited to pose to get to know them better. The portraits are gathered around a table, a kind of feminine banquet that can recall The Last Supper. The figures adopt a variety of postures: some are chatting, others are listening, while a few seem to be deep in thought. Various sculptures of animals and objects are associated with this scene, always reflecting the artist’s associations with her own references: myths, fables, images that resonate differently with each viewer. A single figure appears further away, as a spectator. Far from being a fixed narrative, the work invites viewers to compose their own narratives, freely associating the characters and symbols they see.

The installation À la table des Dames (At the Ladies’ table), on which the artist has been working for several years, gives its name to Cécile Raynal’s solo exhibition at Montivilliers Abbey in Normandy (2025). In this historic site, long home to women, nuns and abbesses, the sculptor has chosen to present works combining portraits of women and animals. Cécile Raynal’s sculptures do not seek to seduce, and can even sometimes appear disturbing. Rough, they bear the marks of a passage through matter, through trial, and yet they stand upright, alive. They conjure up a world in which the animal, feminine, instinctive or rebellious side is embraced as an essential force. In the restored Abbey, the exhibition retraces the last fifteen years of the French artist’s singular career.

Cécile Raynal’s work oscillates between her studio in Normandy and residencies in places on the fringes of society: prisons, hospitals, convents… In these places, she creates clay portraits based on the interactions with the people she meets. Back in the studio, the artist extends this approach by drawing on a vast repertoire of tales, myths and literary references, giving rise to sculptures of animals and hybrid creatures, half-human, half-animal. Thanks to the animal figures in her pieces, the artist promotes to the viewers’ eyes the common language and the interactions between beasts and man.

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