Lulu Nuti at Chapelle Jeanne d'Arc with CORE, a site-specific exhibition in Thouars

From April 25 to August 30, 2026, Chapelle Jeanne d’Arc in Thouars, Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Intérêt National in France, presents CORE, a solo exhibition by Italian artist Lulù Nuti. The exhibition will open Saturday, April 25 at 11:30 a.m. in the presence of the artist and will bring together a group of sculptural works conceived in direct dialogue with the spaces of the neo-Gothic chapel that houses the French art center. The project is accompanied by a text by Apolonia Sokol.

The title CORE opens to a plurality of linguistic and conceptual meanings. In Italian it recalls the term “heart,” while in English it indicates the core or center. The phonetic proximity to the French corps also introduces a reference to the body, organic presence and material dimension. The entire exhibition develops around these semantic cores through a series of stainless steel and wrought iron sculptures that transform the characteristics normally associated with industrial metals to orient them toward forms marked by fragility, tension, and unstable balance.

The installation was designed specifically for the rooms of Chapelle Jeanne d’Arc and is articulated as a progressive perceptual experience. The first level of the exhibition is deliberately bare and houses a single stainless steel work, Hysteria III. The sculpture’s isolation within the space produces a close relationship with the visitor and accentuates a feeling of exposure and vulnerability. The work’s polished surface, treated like a mirror, reflects light and absorbs color variations from the chapel’s stained glass windows, incorporating the architecture and light transformations of the environment into the work itself.

In contrast, another group of works, titled Les Clairvoyantes, develops a more overt relationship with the corporeal dimension. The sculptures are distinguished by forms stretched between contrasting extremities that evoke both organisms and tools at the same time, without, however, settling into an unambiguous reading. The final configuration of the works derives directly from the working process and the material’s response to the stresses imposed by the artist. Form, in fact, gradually emerges during the construction phase. Gesture thus maintains a central role in Nuti’s practice.

Each intervention on the material leaves a legible trace: bending, forging, constricting or adapting the metal means inscribing the memory of transformation in the surface. The works thus preserve a constant tension between control and release, between stability and precariousness, returning configurations open to the physical and visual experience of the public. In fact, the perception of the sculptures changes in relation to the movements of the body, the points of view and the light variations that cross the chapel spaces. Matter thus becomes the vehicle of a poetic language in which intimate dimensions and generational issues continuously merge.

Lulu Nuti at Chapelle Jeanne d'Arc with CORE, a site-specific exhibition in Thouars

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