Introduction

Between the abolition of the guillotine as a mean of capital punishment and the opening of Paris' Centre Georges Pompidou, Etienne Chambaud develops and questions the concept of the "beheaded museum". The artist's thesis is to consider the vertigo as the very condition of the exhibition, the museum thus being seen as both a place to exhibit and to exclude.

The exhibition Counter-History of Separation, held at Centre international d'art et du paysage on Vassivière island explores this idea of a permanent imbalance between the materiality of artworks and the language that is holding them together.