The VIVUS exhibition is a plunge into the heart of the living and into the work of the painter and visual artist Caroline Desnoëttes, who develops in her subject matter and technique a coherent and relevant body of work that speaks to the living about their fellow living beings. Today more than ever, in these times of biodiversity crisis, her work constantly reminds us that the living is a complex and beautiful network that links all living beings to a common time and space.

The cylinders of the central paper mill machinery respond to the cycles of the evolution machinery, as visitors wander down the corridor, along the ribbon that marks the ineluctable mutations of species at the inconceivable rate of billions of years.

The works of Caroline Desnoëttes and their scenography, specially designed for the Papeterie de Uzerche, have the visitor travelling to the farthest reaches of our origins. Distant times seem current to us. Strange species seem familiar.

VIVUS is a journey that leads us to marvel at the fragile harmony of life and to question the ways and means to preserve its beauty and diversity.
With the intimate and collective ordeal we are going through, facing the virus, the VIVUS exhibition invites us to reconsider one letter, the "V" of vitality.”

• Angélique Bretaudeau, Culture & Patrimony Director of Uzerche
• Ronan de la Croix, co-curator of the exhibhition
• The team of La salle de la machine
• Olivier Adam : a bio-acoustics specialist who has studied various cetacean species since 2001. He recently described the different roles of the respiratory system of mysticetes to explain their sound production. He is currently working on the interactions between mother humpback whales and their calves. With some 40 articles written for science magazines, he organized an international conference on acoustics and cetaceans in June 2018 (http://sabiod.univ-tln.fr/DCLDE)
• Thierry Aubin : director of Research at the CNRS and team head of the UMR 9197 neuroscience institute at Paris-Saclay University. After studying neurobiology and ethology, he specialized in animal acoustic communication, particularly crocodiles, penguins, songbirds and sea lions. He has published over one hundred scientific articles and has carried out numerous missions in the Arctic, Antarctic and the Amazon rainforest.
• Fabrice Gaboriau, photographer