mural

The art piece

Not so long ago, laundry was done in the community laundries of our villages. Water was precious and tasks were carried out collectively.

The Sœur Louise Bron senior citizens’ home in Fully has a treasure trove hidden away in its backyard. Here you’ll find a space where time stands still, where the shade of majestic trees and the leisure of a bench invite you to relax and contemplate a moving mural.

The art piece ‘Julie & Alice’ echoes an archive photograph inside the building. Artist Jasm One has chosen to bring back to life the personal memory of a former resident of the home, revealing all the symbolism and power of this captured moment. Jasm One’s intervention is at once a tribute, a reminder and a message.

This monumental mural celebrates the elderly and collective memory, highlighting the importance of the elderly and their often underestimated wealth of knowledge. It is a reminder of the passage of time, changing lifestyles and the potential for a return to community practices, particularly around water management. The message is addressed to current generations, urging them to appreciate modernity while realizing that nothing can be taken for granted. Indeed, no one can guarantee an abundance of water in the years to come, or a return to communal systems. The boom in laundromats in major cities illustrates this return to contemporary community models.

In this scene, where time seems to have stood still and the characters’ gaze relentlessly rivets us, the artist brings us face to face with the human being and all the values that the characters inspire in us.

A striking anecdote from Jasm One accompanies this creation:

” When I started the art piece, all I had to go on was the photo and all the messages I could see in it to tell my story. I didn’t know anything about the characters, and I didn’t expect what was going to happen.

During the first few days of production, villagers came up to me to ask questions about the two women, the place and the time when the original photo would have been taken.

While some came to question me, others came to speculate.

As the days went by, the story of this image became the enigma to be solved for an entire village.

Everyone had their own information, beliefs and hypotheses, but no one knew…

until one day… Mme Ducret, a lady in her sixties, approached me, her eyes soaked with emotion and her heart full of memories.

The silence is broken by a shivering voice delivering a “THANK YOU, it’s my mom!”

It was at this point that Madame Ducret revealed all the secrets of the photo.

She explained that the figure on the right was “Julie”, her mom and her best friend. That they used to wash the family laundry together at the village fountain. That this everyday scene had been taken in Randonnaz, a village in the Fully commune that disappeared after the Second World War to make way for a mountain pasture. She told me that, at the time of the scene, Julie had a little sister who was still with us today. She completed the story by telling me that her mother had had 11 children, and that all her siblings were also still alive. Madame Ducret shared her family’s personal memories with me, and this unlikely encounter helped to shed light on the story behind the image.

But the magic didn’t stop there. Just as I was finishing the final touches to the art piece, Mrs Ducret surprised me by coming back to see me, accompanied by Julie’s sister, the ten other children and the grandchildren. The three generations gathered in front of the mural where their sister, mother and grandmother are now immortalized.

This day and this meeting were a most precious gift, given that Julie’s sister, the dean of the family, left us a few months later.”

This achievement demonstrates the power and impact that an art piece can have on the memory and present-day life of a village.