Following the unveiling of the Under the gaze of the trees project during the JNA 2025 Days (see the Littoral article dated September 12, 2026), the Château d’Oléron Town Hall entrusted me with a special mission: to gift the village an exhibition of Œillarbres. After several site visits, the Chemin des Remparts de la Citadelle emerged as the obvious choice to host this silent presence for ten years.
Since January 2026, ten large-format Alu-Dibond panels—some measuring 200 × 120 cm—depicting fourteen Œillarbres selected in collaboration with the Town Hall’s Culture Commission have been installed beneath a grove of umbrella pines facing the sea.
The installation leaves no one indifferent: some criticize it, others adore it. But everyone agrees on one point: it provokes thought. It invites passersby to reflect on the essential role of trees and forests in our lives. Through this exhibition, the trees seem to come to life, watching us, as if they carried within them an ancient wisdom—calm and deeply alive. What are they trying to tell us, these beings that have taken decades—sometimes centuries—to grow, offering us their shade, their wood, their beauty?
These silent beings remind us of our responsibility toward all living things, the urgency of preserving nature, and the need to respect forests, the true lungs of the Earth. They invite us to slow down, to listen, to respect these forests that breathe for us.
The savage is not the forest. The savage is the one who forgets that the woods are sacred. And in the astonished eyes of the Œillarbres, it is our disoriented societies that are reflected.
It is up to us to hear their message. To read in their wooden eyes the possibility of a different relationship with the world. For the Œillarbres are not merely images: they are flashes of consciousness, sentinels who show us, perhaps, the path to our survival.
