Jaumes Privat: Occitan Border Lines

Curator’s talk: Stuart Reid

Photo credit: David Vivian

Author/artist Jaumes Privat does not dissociate literature from art and creates both in the same gesture. Occitan Border Lines (Museum in the Hallway, Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, 24 February-31 March 2025) features small-size paper works highlighting this double approach. Privat’s choice to write in Occitan, an endangered language in the South of France that survives mostly in the literary works it continues to produce, allows him to position himself on a social and creative margin at the same time as he assumes the role of a “passeur de mémoire” (transmitter of knowledge) evoking traditional knowledge, a rich medieval literature, and a history marked by repression and censorship.

Curator’s talk: Stuart Reid (3 March 2025).

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