Laure Mathieu's title for her solo show in Brest invites you to travel. It evokes a fleet on the ocean nerby. One would be happy to poetically embark on a three-master and set sail for some exotic destination.

But actually, “La flotte bleue" refers to a group of aquatic species which evolves between sea and air, like a border or a filter. From their Latin names "velella velella", "physalia phisalys" or "janthina janthina", these little blue organisms, barely visible, float on the surface of the oceans and wander with the winds.
For the young French artist, they are as much a decor as a poetic and methodological metaphor for her project. The whole project deals with visibility (and, indeed, about invisibility) and dissemination.

Pursuing her practice of writing and fiction, the artist has chosen to address a series of anonymous letters to different persons in Brest : elected officials, laundresses, the art center’s visitors, etc. She envisions the dissemination of these letters in the urban and social space on different media as unexpected as a tram ticket or printed clothes. The letters travel in the city as the daily commute of Passerelle’s employees. Can they be read by the people of Brest? Maybe, maybe not. Still, they inhabit the city.

Their content is all about fiction or rewritten histories. Laure Mathieu refers, for instance, to Hollywood blockbuster The Conquerors (1956) by Dick Powell whose outdoor scenes were shot near US Army nuclear test sites in the Utah desert. Exposed to sandstorms laden with radioactive particles, several members of the team, including star John Wayne, were highly contaminated until they developed cancer. History of dissemination and invisibility, always.