Vivien Zhang

Barbe à Papa (French for cotton candy or candy floss) is an exhibition that could be defined as a travelling fairground’s shadow, slowed down and in the process of dismantling. The exhibition gathers works by more than 50 artists – sculpture, installation, video, painting and performance – sharing material, formal or cultural ties with fairgrounds’ components. Artworks are thus made from air, electricity, steel and plastic but also sugar and oil.

Barbe à Papa’s hypothesis is that the fairground is a place of choice to attempt to get closer to the sky. Think of the rides you find there: today Ferris wheels and rollercoasters, yesterday greasy poles and aerial walks. Bodies fly away, balloons flutter, sugar takes the shape of cumulonimbuses. Everything at the fair participates in suspending terrestrial gravity.

Barbe à Papa is equally the attempt – historically grounded – to bring the fairground and the exhibition together, to better understand their shared mechanisms, but also ask the question: what can the museum learn from the funfair today? As well as: is an artwork, always, an attraction?