In ancient Greece, art and craft embodied an awakened consciousness and a protean vision of society: mètis*. An intelligence at the service of the creation and transformation of materials, tools and objects. This is the knowledge developed by artists, craftsmen, technicians and do-it-yourselfers. Artisans of transformation, they master the arts of fire and orchestrate spectacular metamorphoses of matter. Throughout history, this harmony has sometimes given way to opposition between knowledge and know-how, between the hand and the mind, as if in fear of this creative energy.

Today, the questioning of this traditional scale of values reflects a growing desire for a new understanding of the world, questioning its evolutionary model and its durability. New forms of expression are emerging at the very point where the divide between art and craft used to exist. An approach that proposes a singular vision of the world and of materials, balancing tradition and innovation. Is our understanding of objects and the people who create them intimately linked to our ability to analyse the present?

To understand them, we need to push open the door to where things are happening: backyards transformed into shared workshops, old factories converted into Fablabs, industrial wasteland metamorphosed into a place for experimentation, and everywhere the same thing in common: a primal urge, a visceral need that keeps coming back, that of creating to give meaning. The μῆτις exhibition aims to highlight this new generation of artists and designers who pay homage to know-how and materials. Upcycling, industrial process, ceramics, fabrics, earth and metal, each offers a personal interpretation of the multiple links between art and craft.

*Mètis in ancient Greek μῆτις.