Photo : Laurent Pernot
"Shards of Love - Carte Blanche for Laurent Pernot" at the Postal Museum
Love letters once lost to war find a new life in this hauntingly beautiful installation. By weaving forgotten historical correspondences into modern visual art, the artist explores the resilience of human connection against the backdrop of turmoil. It is a quiet, profound experience that turns historical fragments into a timeless dialogue.
Musée Postal (Paris 15th)
About
From June 6, 2026, to February 15, 2027, the Musée Postal presents Eclats d'amour, a carte blanche exhibition by multidisciplinary artist Laurent Pernot. This collection examines the endurance of emotions and human fragility through the lens of wartime correspondence. By transforming historical letters—such as those from the Siege of Paris—into mobiles, sculptures, and video projections, the artist creates a contemplative space where the past continues to speak. This exhibition is a ticketed event located in the 15th arrondissement. It offers a unique opportunity to witness how intimate personal messages can survive historical conflicts through poetic and material reinterpretation.
A multidisciplinary artist, Laurent Pernot develops work at the crossroads of video, photography, painting, sculpture, and installation. His approach explores time, memory, and the fragility of existence, while also questioning the relationships between man and nature. Nourished by literary, poetic, and philosophical references, his work establishes spaces of suspension conducive to contemplation.
Upon discovering ancient letters in the museum's collections, he chose fragments of love and tenderness that reveal a permanence of emotions through conflicts. These voices, coming from different eras, constitute the starting point and the common thread of his project.
A few words of love…
The works gathered for this carte blanche decline, in varied forms, the circulation and persistence of love letters in times of war. With "Lettres aux vents" (Letters to the Winds), correspondence transported by balloon during the Siege of Paris is reinterpreted on light paper and then assembled into an aerial mobile, where fragments of sentences, highlighted with silver leaf, seem to continue their journey.
Other pieces are anchored in a denser materiality: documents, photographs, and texts are collected, transformed, and transposed onto different supports, mixing eras and voices in a single composition. The words, sometimes extracted from letters by writers or anonymous people, also unfold in space in suspended form, their altered letters evoking the test of time and the violence of conflicts as much as the strength of the emotional bond.
Elsewhere, everyday objects, such as a mailbox frozen in ice, extend this reflection by suggesting a stopped time, where feelings are preserved despite adversity. Finally, fragments of correspondence appear in projected form, creating a continuous flow that brings these ancient words closer to a contemporary language, like a conversation that continues through time.
Our take on this event
Housed within the Musée Postal in Paris, the Eclats d'amour exhibition runs from 06/06/2026 to 15/02/2027. Laurent Pernot explores the intersection of memory and nature, using his background in video, photography, and installation art to give new life to archival materials found within the museum's collections.
The centerpiece of the exhibition focuses on the circulation of love letters during wartime. Visitors can observe Lettres aux vents, where correspondence from the Siege of Paris is reimagined as an aerial mobile decorated with silver leaf. Other works feature everyday objects encased in ice or textual displays that evoke the passage of time and the strength of emotional bonds despite adversity.
Combining voices from various eras, the artist uses these fragments to maintain a continuous dialogue across time. The exhibition is accessible via a paid ticket. Please check the venue's standard operating hours before planning your visit to the museum.
