The Cabin

Perched on a tree or nestled at the back of the garden, set up on a beach, the cabin is a place of dreams and an escape into the imagination, where the child will build their own future without replicating the daily life of adults. The cabin first offers a space for play, but it is also a retreat, a refuge against prohibitions and parental authority, a place of initiation or transitional rituals between childhood and adulthood, as seen among the Bushmen. However, the cabin can also take on a more political dimension, serving as a social response to the rigidity of regulations or as a site of protest and refusal. In this context, the cabin does not inhabit; it occupies territory. For this theme, the choice was made to feature five contemporary artists from the French art scene, each with different backgrounds, representing the cabin according to their own universe and interpretation. Muriel Patarroni depicts it in various settings: deep in the woods for child builders, an enclosure for livestock, or even a refuge for the homeless. Isabelle Scotta captures beach cabins at dawn in Deauville or Royan, where the anticipation of the next summer is palpable. Elina Huneman-Kulich's fantastic imagination leads us into constructions with distorted perspectives, creating a sense of vertigo and exhilaration. The artist oscillates between the Martiniquan refuge or the fig-leaf shelter. Amélie Labourdette takes a sociological view of the cabin, presenting it as rubble marking the end of the colonial era or as a concrete skeleton. Quentin Germain, in his paintings, explores architectural remnants, where the chemical reaction of rust on steel heightens a sense of ruin. We are no longer on the surface but deep in the oceans. Let us not forget that the cabin can only be ephemeral—it will disappear.