"Witches": an exceptional exhibition at the Nantes History Museum. Through an immersive and rigorous journey, this exhibition explores one of the largest persecutions in history: that of women accused of witchcraft, from the twilight of the Middle Ages to the Modern Era.
Going beyond clichés and stereotypical representations, the exhibition aims to shed light on the historical, social, and cultural roots of the figure of the witch, while revealing the multiple realities as well as the fictions that have successively been projected onto this term.
The journey opens with the sorceresses of Antiquity, exalted by ancient poets and authors, whose rites and practices were then known to all. It then traverses the great medieval anxieties, the inquisitorial trials, before focusing on the intensification of witch hunts in the 16th and 17th centuries. The itinerary finally leads to the gradual decriminalization of occult practices, culminating in the contemporary reappropriation of the image of the witch, now seen as a figure of power, freed from any demonic connotation.
To reconstruct and trace this dizzying thread, nearly 180 works and objects – engravings, paintings, ancient manuscripts, cult or witchcraft objects – from prestigious French and European institutions, along with multimedia devices – films, testimonies, animated maps, sound design – punctuate this journey at the borders of reality and the confines of imagination.
Oscillating between collective imagination, obscured memory, and the history of fear, this exhibition aims to provide a critical and salutary perspective on a troubled era. It finally reveals the relevance of this subject, whose stakes – gender, body, sexuality, domination, manipulation, forgetfulness – remain at the heart of contemporary concerns.
Witches #8march #ExhibitionChâteau
Source: Nantes Métropole