In this conversation, artist and researcher Stéphanie Sagot looks back on her career and on the formative experience of La Cuisine, the art centre in Nègrepelisse which she co-founded and directed for several years. She reflects on the political tensions that eventually led to its closure, but also on the sensitive, concrete, and lasting traces it left on the territory: a new way of involving artists in public projects, decisive encounters, works that continue to exist, and an architectural heritage that remains recognised. Today, her practice unfolds through more flexible forms – performances, watercolours, ceramics, and collaborations with researchers, doctors, and activists – that weave together ecology, art, and care. Between the memory of past struggles and the exploration of new narratives, she sketches the outlines of a practice attentive to living beings and to the sensitive connections that bind us to the world.
Nathalie Blanc:
Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. I would like to begin with a central question: how has your practice evolved – both as an academic and as an artist – to become what it is today, a practice that engages with nature through rituals and processes of ritualisation? Could you share a few elements of your trajectory?
Stéphanie Sagot:
I can start from the very beginning. I grew up on an oyster farm, in the Marennes-Oléron basin in La Tremblade. My grandparents and parents were oyster farmers. This experience profoundly shaped the way I relate to the world.
If I make a leap forward: after completing my doctorate in art and design, I worked on everyday practices. Very quickly, the question of food entered my work. At the time, I held a research fellowship and taught at the university. That was when I met Jean Cambon, then mayor of Nègrepelisse, a small rural town in the Tarn-et-Garonne with around 5,000 inhabitants. He asked me to imagine a cultural venue for the municipality.
My thesis was coming to an end, and I had read extensively on contextual practices, notably Paul Ardenne (Un art contextuel, 2002), as well as Michel de Certeau. I had also consulted reports on cultural mediation and conducted interviews at the Ministry of Culture. In 2004, there was still no art centre in the Tarn-et-Garonne, despite the decentralisation policies launched in the 1980s. I therefore proposed creating a contemporary art centre, but one conceived differently from existing structures: an art centre in context, genuinely rooted in its territory.
Tarn-et-Garonne is known as “the orchard of France”: a major region of fruit production, but also one marked by agro-industry, pesticides, and the social difficulties of the agricultural world. At the same time, there is a strong attachment to gastronomic traditions, and therefore to the rituals of the table. These issues resonated with my exchanges at the university, particularly with Jean-Pierre Poulain in Toulouse, who was working to establish the sociology of food as a specific field.
From this encounter between art, design, and research, La Cuisine, a centre for art and design applied to food, was born. The venue became a space for creation in context, where I invited artists and designers, but also researchers working on food systems and territorial structuring, to bring different approaches together. With a régie directe status, we were directly embedded in the municipality: the town covered roughly 25% of the budget, with the rest provided by institutional partners (State, Region, Department). This was essential, as it allowed us to act concretely on the territory.
I later theorised this approach as a “poetics of the town”: a way of experimenting, in a small municipality of 5,000 inhabitants, with how art can intervene at various scales – local, intercommunal, regional – and create new connections between creation, research, and everyday life. For me, as an artist, creating a space dedicated to art, inviting other artists, and reflecting on the operational possibilities of art in the real world, within a concrete setting, is itself an artistic gesture – a medium in its own right.
Nathalie Blanc:
What surprises me is that in the context of the 1990s and 2000s, there was largely a return to traditional fine arts – painting, museums… You chose instead a constrained practice, turned towards “the outdoor studio”, directly confronted with reality. Why this choice, and how do you reconcile it with your pictorial or aesthetic practice?
Stéphanie Sagot:
I chose not to attend a Fine Arts school. What interested me was the university, with its openness to intersections between practice and theory: I studied anthropology, aesthetics, sociology… I was at the University of Mirail in Toulouse, and that environment nourished me greatly.
It also allowed me not to anchor myself in a specific medium. In Fine Arts schools, I sometimes found the practices somewhat fixed: painting, sculpture, and so on. I have never conceived my work through a medium. Even though, four or five years ago, I turned to watercolour – more for ecological reasons than purely aesthetic ones.
For example, when I produce a compostable sculpture, I realise afterwards how visually it resonates with my watercolours. But watercolour first arose as a way of lightening myself: after years of managing an institution, with the administrative burden that entailed, I needed to return to a simpler practice.
In 2016, with the artist Suzanne Husky, we founded the Nouveau Ministère de l’Agriculture, while continuing our performances and installations. For me, watercolour gradually emerged as an ecological response: a medium that uses fewer materials, that brings everything back to an extreme simplicity. Of course, it places me within a pictorial tradition, an almost weighty classicism. But I manage to approach it with a kind of naivety that allows me to keep moving.
I choose my papers carefully, I know where they come from, and I am considering making my own. I also work with craftswomen who produce pigments from natural harvests, and who are often art historians. We discuss the references I want to engage with, and they create pigments accordingly. I still use some industrial watercolours, but respectful ones. And I am gradually learning to produce my own colours.
Nathalie Blanc:
This evokes two questions for me: first, what artistic and aesthetic training did you receive? And second, what has been your relationship to ecological sciences, which are themselves so rich?
Stéphanie Sagot:
I first completed a baccalaureate with an art option, where I practised drawing, painting, modelling – very classical approaches, without installation or performance. I then began studying art history, but I missed the practical side. So I switched to a qualification in interior architecture, thinking I might become a landscape designer and join the landscape schools in Bordeaux or Versailles.
But my internships in architecture firms made it clear that this was not for me. I eventually entered directly into the third year at the university, after the DEUG. That is where I discovered research, which utterly captivated and fascinated me.
Nathalie Blanc:
In Toulouse, then?
Stéphanie Sagot:
Yes, in Toulouse.
And regarding ecology, my awareness really stems from my family background. I was born in 1975, and as a teenager in the 1990s I saw my parents – like many oyster farmers in Marennes-Oléron – confronted with new European regulations. They had to transform their traditional oyster huts, now UNESCO-listed, expand their facilities, invest in equipment, hire staff… all to comply with sanitary standards, whereas their work had been based on simple, traditional gestures. These constraints forced them into heavy debt, and at the same time large-scale retail was expanding. Like many producers, my parents began selling to purchasing centres which, once oyster farmers were financially weakened, lowered their orders and put them into competition – exactly as happened in agriculture.
This was when I developed a political awareness, even if I would not have used the word “ecology” then. I understood that a system was emerging, and that it would be destructive. A few years later, IFREMER developed the triploid oyster, supposedly sterile, produced from a so-called “super male”. The term has always amused me, especially as a feminist, since oysters are hermaphrodites and regularly change sex. This innovation meant oyster farmers had to buy their spat from hatcheries, whereas they previously collected it naturally from the ocean, like breathing air or like pollen dispersing. It was akin to the privatisation of seeds by Monsanto.
However, oyster farmers attached to “natural” cultivation had triploid oysters analysed and discovered that they were not always sterile: some still carried oocytes. At the same time, oyster stocks declined overall. The causes are multiple – climate change, pollution, antibiotic use – but the widespread introduction of genetically modified oysters may have weakened the whole system.
This was when I began documenting ecological issues, as a self-taught learner. And when I founded La Cuisine, the link with agriculture became obvious to me: the parallels with oyster farming were striking.
I never received any university training in ecology. On the contrary, I helped introduce these issues at the university by organising conferences and creating a module entitled Design, Art and Ecological Awareness. But in the 1990s and 2000s, such courses did not exist. It is only recently that ecology has become compulsory in some programmes – and even then, rarely.
Nathalie Blanc:
Yes, in principle it is compulsory today. What I find interesting in your trajectory is that you chose the university, perhaps because it allowed a more political, more intellectual engagement with reality than art schools. But between that choice and the creation of La Cuisine, there is a huge step: it was a heavy project, not aligned with an autonomous artistic practice. How did you make that transition? Moving from a thesis – solitary and introspective – to a concrete project on a territory is no small thing.
Stéphanie Sagot:
Even during my thesis, I multiplied collaborations across disciplines. I have always enjoyed such crossovers; it’s a way of feeling at home. And then there were decisive encounters. Meeting Mayor Jean Cambon of Nègrepelisse was crucial. Often, things come down to circumstance: being in the right place at the right time and seizing the opportunity.
I remember my early days studying art history in 1995. Strikes had paralysed the university, and older students came to tell us: “Leave, there are no job prospects – read Bourdieu!” I was young, naïve; coming from the oyster-farming world, I was discovering museums. I already dreamed of directing an art centre, but thought it unrealistic. Yet that desire stayed with me. And Michel de Certeau had convinced me that through bricolage and tactics, one could reach one’s goals differently¹.
When I was teaching at the applied arts faculty (IUP) in Montauban, I was already working with students on plant-related projects in partnership with the departmental council. It was in this context that I met the mayor, who was also vice-president of the department. At the end of my teaching fellowship, I applied for an academic post, but the position offered was part-time, poorly paid, and financially difficult. At 28–29, I wanted something else.
That was when the mayor said: “Rather than bringing in a cultural consultancy that will propose yet another ecomuseum, I prefer entrusting the project to an artist-researcher.” He himself was a former social sciences researcher. He offered me a concrete, paid position within the local civil service. I worked full time on developing the venue, while continuing my artistic and research practice. But designing that centre was already a form of research. It was an exciting adventure: I read reports on decentralisation, European funding, rural development programmes, and met local actors. All these dimensions – art, food, ecology, territory – fell into place.
Nathalie Blanc:
And what was the objective, for you and for the mayor? To transform the territory? To create a cultural hub? Was ecology already central? And when you say you “fell from high”, was that about politics and its limits in territorial transformation?
Stéphanie Sagot:
Yes, absolutely. And I think it is important to draw lessons from this, perhaps to reinvent such spaces today.
Nathalie Blanc:
So, what do you take from it?
Stéphanie Sagot:
At the beginning, in the 2000s, there was still a certain freedom in programming in the visual arts. But gradually, from 2010 onwards, constraints tightened. As in academic research, artistic directors theoretically have guarantees of independence, but in practice political and institutional pressures make things very difficult. I experienced both this freedom and its limits.
Nathalie Blanc:
And for the mayor, what was the purpose of the centre? And for you?
Stéphanie Sagot:
For him, the priority was to create a cultural facility so that Nègrepelisse would remain a living town and not turn into a commuter suburb of Toulouse, 80 km away. Between 2004, when I arrived, and 2016, when I left, the population grew from 4,000 to 5,000 – a 20% increase that radically changed urban planning. He wanted his town to offer the same services as a bigger city: hospital, secondary school, art school… and a contemporary art centre.
It was bold, because many people told us: “Why in Nègrepelisse? Do this in Toulouse!” We had to justify the relevance of contemporary art in a rural setting. Fortunately, artists and critics such as Robert Milin and Guy Tortosa supported us. The goal was clear: to offer access to high-quality, sincere contemporary culture, and to anchor it in the issues of the territory.
Mediation was essential: children, from nursery school onwards, took part in artistic projects, as did care homes and local associations. Gradually, we even began working with artists on municipal public policies, which opened exciting possibilities. All this was possible because the mayor carried the vision. But in 2014, after twenty years in office, he lost the election. The very next day, a banner reading “New Management” was hung on the art centre. It was a shock.
Nathalie Blanc:
I can imagine.
Stéphanie Sagot:
From that moment onwards, it became extremely violent. Situations were very harsh, especially for the employees.
Nathalie Blanc:
How many staff members were there?
Stéphanie Sagot:
Around six. It was a real team. Yet the situation was very difficult. There were a few calmer periods. I left in 2016, but until the closure in 2022, directors succeeded one another without being able to work in peace. The municipality constantly obstructed them. Today, nothing remains: once they decided to close the art centre, institutional partners logically stopped funding. The elected officials imagined they would obtain funding to open a restaurant and exhibit only local artists with no commitment to contemporary art. Unsurprisingly, this failed.
Behind this closure lies a broader ideology, linked to the rise of the far right. In the Tarn-et-Garonne, this tendency has been visible since 2004, and reflects a phenomenon observed in both rural and urban areas.
Nathalie Blanc:
Looking back, beyond this violence, what sensitive or concrete traces of your work remain in the territory? If you had to tell the story of the transformations the centre brought about, in relation to today’s political shifts, how would you describe them?
Stéphanie Sagot:
I would say that some transformations are very real. For example, with the Pays Midi-Quercy, we worked extensively on how to integrate artists and designers into territorial projects. Initially, they envisaged artistic interventions only at the end of diagnostic processes, with a brief for a public artwork. I proposed a different approach: involve artists from the beginning, during diagnostics and consultation phases. We experimented together, and they discovered how valuable artistic creativity, disruption, and diversity of viewpoints could be. They still work this way today. This is a genuine achievement.
Other impacts are more individual but equally significant. I remember a student I met during a jury at ENSCI – the National School of Industrial Design – who told me he had chosen the school because he had visited La Cuisine. Without it, he would never have discovered design. The former mayor recently wrote to me saying he often thinks about what we accomplished, and about what remains both in people’s hearts and in the landscape.
There are also material traces. The building designed by RCR Arquitectes, Pritzker Prize² laureates in 2017, still stands. Its heritage value makes the centre’s closure all the more absurd. Several artworks also remain in public space. For instance, with designer Matali Crasset, we created an apiary called Le bois de Sharewood. Initially intended to be municipal, it was eventually entrusted to the association Pollen. Today, more than a hundred members keep it alive, and honey from Nègrepelisse is still produced there. The municipality also transformed a small building into a “House of Honey”. These places still operate and embody continuity, including ecological continuity.
Nathalie Blanc:
If, today, you were to imagine – as an artist and researcher – a new venue or laboratory for spreading ecological culture and inhabiting territories differently, how would you approach it?
Stéphanie Sagot:
Honestly, I don’t know. The situation today seems far too complex: territorial policies, universities, cultural funding – everything is fragile. The era is no longer the same. Perhaps the starting point would need to be a private initiative: acquiring land, building a community, then forming an association and seeking political support. But that is not where I place my work today.
What I now prioritise are more flexible forms. For instance, after my performance Les nourritures politiques at the Château de Goutelas, a Green Party councillor invited me to take part in her summer university. In the end, the project did not happen at that moment, but we have remained in contact, and she recently proposed I contribute to an autumn university on rural narratives and imaginaries to counter the far right. Even if I cannot attend, I sense that things are beginning to take shape. This is the direction I want to move towards: working alongside politicians, without losing my independence, and bringing creativity to places where it is desperately lacking.
Nathalie Blanc:
To conclude, what are the “places” of your practice today, in the symbolic, aesthetic, political, and ecological senses? What form of ecology do you advocate?
Stéphanie Sagot:
It is still taking shape, nourished by encounters. With Olivier Darné – founder and director of the Parti Poétique – for whom I created a sculptural tool, the Autel Humus, to act concretely and regenerate soil life. Or with artists and philosophers deeply engaged in agricultural questions, such as Stephen Wright and Tamarin Rossetti, with whom I am exploring the links between art, agriculture, and funding. We are working on the idea of a collective capable of imagining a new, artistic and ecological Common Agricultural Policy (PAC). It would be an experiment: designing together a programme that addresses political, ecological, and artistic issues, then presenting it to institutional actors. But these dynamics are fragile, subject to individual constraints and the difficulty of sustaining collective energy.
In my personal practice, watercolours, ceramics, and performances play different roles. Images, for instance, have their own power: some of my watercolours circulate in exhibitions, but also in documentaries or newspapers – recently, I was asked to illustrate an article on Mercosur for Le Monde Diplomatique. These gestures are both aesthetic and activist, carrying a certain gentleness that I find essential to my “Terres Amoureuses” project.
Finally, I am developing work with Gregory Baptista, a doctor and meditation instructor. We are seeking to articulate meditation, ecology, and art within a form of “world-medicine”: a practice of care that links mindfulness, attention to living beings, connection to the cosmos, and humility. Our first meditative installation will open at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, in my exhibition Voyage en Terres Amoureuses. The aim is to offer ecological meditation experiences, enabling visitors to rediscover a rightful place within the vastness of the world.
Nathalie Blanc:
Thank you for this interview Stephanie!
¹ Stéphanie Sagot draws on the idea developed by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life (1980): even without institutional power or substantial resources, it is possible to transform a situation through inventive, discreet yet effective gestures.
²The Pritzker Prize, established in 1979 by the Hyatt Foundation, is regarded as the most prestigious international distinction in architecture. Often described as the “Nobel of architecture”, it recognises each year an outstanding built work and the overall career of an architect or practice.
