Audrée Wilhelmy

Talismans : mémoires perchées

Workshop with the Sutton school and the Villa des Monts

Friday 28 August 2026, at 4:00 PM

DesPrés | Pré culturel — 57 Principale Street North, Sutton (Quebec)

This intergenerational workshop invites children and seniors to create a collective work inspired by the land. The youngest participants are first called upon to explore the surroundings, observe the forest, and carefully gather natural elements that have already fallen to the ground: leaves, seeds, bark, twigs, or other treasures found along their path.

INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION: sutton.ca

Biography

Audrée Wilhelmy is a writer and visual artist based in Quebec. Her work explores the links between narrative, matter, and ritual through writing, sculpture, and the creation of talismans blending natural materials with jewelry-making techniques. Her objects, designed as narrative forms, question how matter can carry meaning and memory. Author of several novels published in France and Quebec, her work has been a finalist for and winner of numerous awards. Her practice unfolds at the intersection of the literary and the visual arts, in a research attentive to forms, gestures, and writing modes.

Approach

Using these materials, participants then craft paper beads containing short messages, wishes, memories, or fragments of stories hidden inside. The making process becomes a meeting space where seniors are invited to share their stories, their memories of the land, and the experiences that have shaped their lives. Children thus discover a living heritage passed down through speech and exchange.

The finished beads are then assembled into light hanging pieces incorporating the gathered materials. Installed in the trees, they form an ephemeral intervention that bears witness to the participants’ presence and the bonds woven between them. Through the acts of gathering, making, storytelling, and hanging, the workshop celebrates curiosity, listening, and transmission, while offering an accessible artistic experience where nature becomes material, memory, and meeting place all at once.