Territories of our collective imagination

Topoésie, a work by Marie-Claude De Souza

Toponymy + Poetry

This work focuses on place names, nicknames for locations used in everyday language without being officially recorded in toponymy. Some spaces are given such names because of their function or the importance they hold in the daily lives of the inhabitants. In each community I visit, I install ephemeral poetic signs to identify places that exist in the popular imagination but are not found on any official map. In collaboration with the citizens, I give individual significance to certain places that, until now, have been anonymous or impersonal.

By poeticizing space, I invite passersby to reconsider their immediate environment, while nurturing their capacity to transform it. While I want each intervention to remain unique through its on-site process and the artistic traces left in situ, I would also like to situate it within a broader reflection on our ways of inhabiting the territory. In the long term, this website is intended to:

— create a digital archive, synthesizing each creative cycle;
— showcase regional particularities;
— highlight comparisons and distinctive elements for each community.

To propose a place name to the artist.

To learn more about the artist and their approach.