Anne-Francoise RoucheFictions Modestes & Réalités Augmentées

The book tells the incredible story of an artistic and human epic, original and offbeat, whose main field of exploration is in the Belgian Ardennes.
The “S” Grand Atelier is an art centre that accompanies raw, talented artists who are weakened by a mental disability.
Far from the clichés about mental disability, the “S” Grand Atelier defends a demanding art, both raw and contemporary, thanks to its policy of mixing raw artists with contemporary artists and breaking down categories.
A unique positioning that has earned the “S” community the nickname of “disability punks”.
Fictions Modestes & Réalités Augmentées is brimming with carefully processed images, often in large format. The catalogue is written in the first person by Anne-Françoise Rouche, who recounts some of the fabulous experiences of life in the art centre she founded in the early 1990s.
Noëlig Le Roux, who shares the curatorship of the exhibition with her, brings a critical eye to it and analyses the contributions that such an exhibition can make to a museum.
He confirms the MIAM’s desire to explore the margins of contemporary art and to expand its borders into little-known territories.
Unquestionably, the experiments developed at La “S” Grand Atelier and those of the MIAM seem to be fed by the same energy.
Fictions Modestes & Réalités Augmentées plunges us into new and fascinating worlds, from graphic narration to less expected media such as cinema, textile design, photography or digital arts.
The result is a relaxed and offbeat artistic approach seasoned with a Belgitude inherited from surrealism, made up of a few impertinences, a little audacity and a good touch of self-mockery…