Track of the arts: Creatures

As part of its cultural policy, the community of Sumène Artense is hosting a new artist residency. Jonathan Sitthiphonh explores the territory to question our relationship with progress and nature.

Jonathan Sitthiphonh graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art de Bourges in 2010 and has traveled throughout France and abroad (China, United States, Japan, Canada, Taiwan) through residencies and exhibitions.

In the spring of 2026, he traveled around Sumène Artense to get inspired by landscapes before setting up his workshop there during the summer.

His research aims to set up devices that are grafted on the body and come to life to give birth to a hybrid being and reveal an obsession: becoming more than a man.

The failure of the fragile and constraining mechanisms created by the artist stages the limits of humanity while celebrating its desire for transcendence.

The choice of materials aims to sublimate the mechanisms from a sculptural point of view.

The exhibition "Creatures" installed until August 2027 presents a fantastic bestiary inspired by local fauna and flora.

"My body deformed by my sculptures blends into the background and reveals a mysterious silhouette. Through the viewer’s gaze, a creature emerges, and everyone’s imagination takes over. The evocative potential of these images therefore leaves a part of the work to the public: that of interpreting, imagining, naming and thus collectively developing a contemporary mythology."

In the fall, the artist goes to meet the students (from CM1 to 6ème). He will present his artistic approach and propose to them to imagine in their turn hybrid creatures.
A panel on each exhibition site will be dedicated to the plastic productions of the students to complete the artist’s bestiary.

Three exhibition areas:
In Verchalles (municipality of Vebret)
In Ydes (near the rental center)
In Parensol (municipality of Bassignac)