the art of dyeing
DISCUSSION WITH JOËL DAGÈS,
ARTIST, FOUNDER OF la ferme busquet
Photos by Thomas Lodin
Each collection has its own universe and its own encounters. For this collection, which celebrates both counter-cultures and renewal, we went to lose ourselves in the idyllic setting of the Busquet farm, a handful of kilometres from Dax, surrounded by the shimmering dyes of Joël Dagès. Since 2019, the farm has been offering initiatives based around ecological cultivation through events, but also the production of flowers for cutting and dyeing.
We put time on hold and enjoyed a fascinating interlude with him to talk about his work, from his life in the Parisian art and fashion world, to his turn in the world of cultivation and ecological dyeing.
You originally came from an arts and fashion background. What was
your path to Busquet Farm?
I'm a visual artist living and working in Narosse, in the Landes region of France. I worked for 30 years in fashion and art education in Paris. I started out in haute couture, in a workshop where I actually made clothes. Then, little by little, I changed my profession and became a stylist. I worked for houses like Christophe Lemaire, Yves Saint-Laurent and Balenciaga.
It was a world that excited me, but which I was also sometimes fed up with. Basically, what I've always loved is the garment itself, the fabric, what to do with it, how to transform it using materials and shapes. So, between fashion houses, I created small brands, more focused on craftsmanship.
At the same time as these activities, I was also teaching clothing design at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (ENSAD), which was a bit of a fashion course after all. With the students we created collections, from research work to the end-of-year fashion show.
I was also an object teacher for the first years. It's quite a broad speciality, but it basically consisted of expressing your creativity through any medium. Textiles, wood, resin, but also photography and video. It was really interesting for me, because it plunged me back into a very creative bath. As someone who's always liked to mix it all up - fashion, fabrics, textiles, shapes - that's what I've been doing for 30 years in Paris.
It's funny to talk about it again today, because looking back I realise that perhaps I wasn't fully aware of all that. Of the richness, of all the aspirations that came from everywhere, whether through my different jobs, but also my encounters, with photographers, technicians, the students I had. I think that's what kept me from getting bored in a job, doing the same thing all the time (which may suit some people, but not me). All this served me well and fed me for my departure and my new life when I came back to the Landes.
Where did this desire, or need, to "get back to the land" come from? Did something click?
Yes, there was a desire, but it didn't really click when I was in Paris. I was in a very creative environment, I hung out with a lot of artists, film people and so on. So I wasn't bored, but there was still something a bit stuck. It was more a question of feeling the space. I was in a very big city, but at the same time I felt enclosed.
It has to be said that I was born in the countryside. I lived on this farm until I was 18, so there must have been something lacking, as if my body was a little short of space. During my last 10 years in Paris, I went to the parks more and more, further and further away. And I started coming back here more and more often. Then one day, in May 5 or 6 years ago, I came back and had a kind of epiphany. Everything was lit up, very beautiful, it was spring, there were flowers everywhere, something quite strong, and I said to myself: "Well, in fact, this space is my home". That sentence echoed in my head. I didn't know what I wanted to do yet, but this was where I wanted to be. As I wandered around the property, it came to me like images: in one place a sewing workshop, in another a DIY workshop... The ideas came to me as I went along.
Au bout d’une heure comme ça, j’étais à la fois heureux et lessivé, d’avoir eu toutes ses idées et de me dire que c’était probablement ça qu’il fallait que je fasse. C’était en même temps risqué, parce que je ne savais pas trop quoi faire, mais en même temps, j’avais cette fatigue de la ville et en terme de carrière, je n’arrivais plus trop à me projeter
Pour ce qui est du retour à la terre, c’est un peu pareil. J’ai surtout repensé à mon enfance, avec de la famille du côté de La Chalosse, dans les Landes, un territoire très rural et agricole. J’ai des souvenirs de mon oncle qui me sont revenus, quand il nous amenait voir les vaches. A l’époque, ça ne me branchait pas plus que ça de me balader dans les champs, mais finalement, tout ça est revenu. Et en effet, la terre, mélangée à ces souvenirs, cette envie d’espace, ça m’a amené à cette idée : j’ai cette envie, maintenant j'en fais quoi ?
It's both clear and confused at the same time. I didn't click and say to myself: I'm going to come back and create Busquet Farm, it's going to be flowers and crafts. No. It was more intuitive, something about the body and feeling.
You mentioned the farm itself as the place where you grew up. Can you tell us more about it?
On a l’impression d’être loin dans la campagne, entourés d’arbres et de tous ces hectares de terrain, mais en fait on est presque dans la ville. Je dis même parfois qu’on est une ferme urbaine tellement la ville gagne du terrain avec ces nouvelles zones industrielles. C’est un peu un écrin, un lieu qui représente beaucoup de souvenirs. Une forme de calme et de sérénité. C’est devenu mon environnement de travail et ça a été quelque chose de très fort, de trouver un espace où se sentir bien pour travailler et créer, il y a quelque chose d’animique là-dedans.
This was my childhood home. We lived there with my parents, my brother and my sister. There used to be people who grew vegetables here, so there's still a farming aspect, but not on my parents' side. In fact, they used to live in the city, very close to here after all, as we're not even 10 minutes from the centre, and they got fed up with it. There was this building that had been abandoned after the war, and they renovated it and turned it into this very quiet house.
You get the impression that you're far out in the countryside, surrounded by trees and all these acres of land, but in fact you're almost in the city. Sometimes I even say that we're an urban farm, because the city is gaining so much ground with all these new industrial zones. It's like a jewel box, a place that holds so many memories. A kind of calm and serenity. It's become my working environment and it's been a very powerful experience to find a space where I can feel good about working and creating.
We're about to celebrate the 4th anniversary of Busquet Farm. Can you tell us a bit more about the project?
It's evolved a bit since the beginning, even if I've kept a few of the ideas I had at the beginning. As I said before, during my stay here in May, which preceded my decision to leave Paris, I had started to come up with quite a few ideas. During my next stay, things became clearer. I wanted to make it a place to develop multi-disciplinary projects around ecology, and ecological culture for artisanal dyeing more specifically.
The idea came up to develop the project as an association, because I wanted to work with other people. I was in the process of escaping from fashion and really getting into textiles. I started doing things for myself, with my own dyeing workshop, making panels. Then I started offering workshops to other people, like introductory courses. I really enjoyed it, and the people who came had a lot of fun.
En parallèle, je voulais continuer dans la culture écologique et l’artisanat. J’ai donc développé un marché d’artisans locaux, qu’on organise aujourd’hui deux fois par an à la ferme. On en profite pour faire un dîner avec des bonnes choses du coin. L’idée c’est de rassembler des gens qui ne se seraient pas rencontrés à d’autres moments, avec comme prétexte l’écologie, l’artisanat local. Dans le même esprit de rencontres, on a commencé à organiser des bals gascons. Ça se passe avec un groupe, avec des instruments acoustiques, un quelqu’un qui va, un peu comme un professeur, initier tout le monde à la danse de Gascogne, de la région. Ce n’est pas un bal professionnel, les gens viennent avant tout pour s’amuser. Je trouvais super l’idée de danse en couple, c’est quelque chose qu’on ne fait plus trop, quand on va en boîte par exemple. Je n’irait pas faire tout le temps de la danse de salon, mais j’aime cette idée, en extérieur, avec toutes les personnes qui se mélangent. Tu danses en couple, en groupe, avec des personnes qui connaissent les pas, ou non, des jeunes, des moins jeunes. Il y a quelque chose de très émouvant.
At the same time, I wanted to continue with the ecological culture and crafts. So I developed a local crafts market, which we now hold twice a year at the farm. We take the opportunity to have a dinner with good local produce. The idea is to bring together people who wouldn't otherwise meet, using ecology and local crafts as a pretext. In the same spirit of encounters, we've started to organise Gascon balls. These are held with a group, acoustic instruments and someone who, rather like a teacher, introduces everyone to the dances of Gascony and the region. It's not a professional ball, people come first and foremost to have fun. I thought the idea of dancing in couples was great, it's something we don't do much any more, when we go to clubs for example. I wouldn't go ballroom dancing all the time, but I like the idea of dancing outdoors, with all the people mixing together. You dance as a couple, in a group, with people who know the steps or not, young and old. There's something very moving about it.
I imagine that Ferme Busquet's activity is also linked to the vagaries of nature and its contingencies. What's it like, in practical terms, to deal with all that?
It's true that there are sometimes complications. Here, for example, we've had so much rain, there's been so much wind that I've lost two greenhouses, and the ground is so flooded that we can't work it. But the important thing is to expect it and to remember that for every problem there is a solution. We know that in March, if it's like previous years, we're going to have frost and that as a result, the buds and seedlings that I'm in the process of planting will freeze a little. And there will certainly be attacks from birds or insects. But that's the way it is, and that's one of the things you have to take into account.
We can always find solutions. We can't do much about heatwaves, for example, but this winter we planted a lot of trees and hedges, which will enable us to lose half a degree, for example. That's always a bonus.
Mais ce qui compte aussi, c’est parfois cette satisfaction d’avoir réussi à surmonter le problème, ça crée de l’expérience. Il y a des jours où c’est plus difficile de voir le côté positif, il faut accuser le coup, mais on transforme quand même, on expérimente. C’est ça aussi qui est intéressant, d’apprendre petit à petit.
But the problem is the same outside agriculture. You can't control everything. Events that we organise, for example, are not going to be well attended because of the weather or something else.
But what also counts is sometimes the satisfaction of having managed to overcome the problem, it creates experience. There are days when it's harder to see the positive side, you have to feel the blow, but you transform all the same, you experiment. That's what's so interesting about learning little by little.
What also counts is sometimes the satisfaction of having succeeded in overcoming the problem, it creates experience.
To talk more about your work, you use an ancestral Japanese dyeing technique called shibori. Can you tell us more about it?
When I was in Paris and still working in fashion, there was one thing that bothered me a lot, and that was the dyeing process, using super-chemicals in astronomical quantities. At the time, there were a lot of documentaries in India and Bangladesh, but also in Europe, showing all these products being poured into our rivers. So I turned to natural dyes. It's more expensive and takes longer, but it's also cleaner. You have to realise that in the fashion world, there's a real interest in Japan, its refined culture and craftsmanship. It's also very present in fashion over there. I've been lucky enough to go there several times, and it was when I was interested in the prints there that I discovered this technique. So it was really thanks to fashion that I got into this.
After that, I do use shibori techniques, which means Japanese techniques, but that's not all. There are other more or less similar techniques, whether in Asia or Africa. I mix a bit of all these inspirations, and I experiment a lot.
We're talking about la Ferme Busquet, but could you tell us more about your artistic practice?
During my time in Paris, I took the time to create other volumes, to ask myself what I could do with textiles. So of course there was the dyeing, the colours, the pigments, the shibori work. Little by little, I developed my practice. Since I've been here, I've been using my studio to create more artistic pieces. Initially, it was more decorative, but now I'm working more and more like a painter. I add colour to the textiles, creating new landscapes and more vibrant things.
Recently too, my work has evolved, I want to create more volume. I'm still using textiles and dyes, but adding other forms, like wood, bamboo, rope or wool. I really have these two directions in my work, the painting side with these flat panels, and these volumes. It's a bit of a revival for me, a new departure with these larger pieces that still want to talk about ecology and this relationship with the world. I've started doing small exhibitions, here at the farm, but also elsewhere, to show my panels but also these assemblages of volumes. I'm very excited about it at the moment.
You mentioned your desire to talk about ecology and your relationship with the world in your work. Can you tell us a bit more about your artistic universe?
I made things that are in the air, that can float. In fact, I really like the fact that you can touch a piece of work, that you're a bit immersed in the fabric in these shapes that are a bit reminiscent of nature, the seabed, space. On my panels, which are a bit like paintings, I work a lot with explosion, a bit like a vision of the cosmos. Ultimately, our environment is where we are. It's something I think about a lot when I'm in my studio working. I'm here, in the environment of Busquet Farm, I live on this planet that I really consider to be my home, which itself is in a solar system, part of the universe. It's all part of wondering where we are at the moment.
It's a bit like that that inspires me, the nature aspect, but not just the nature that surrounds me, that I see around me, but also what we are in the whole space. That's what drives me. I have this awareness of nature, it's an entity without which we can't live. And my work, in a way, questions climate issues. It's one of the things I want to talk about, in the same way as our relationship with the world we live in. It's an artistic reflection that may be a little basic, but it's what I'm interested in looking at at the moment. It gives me ideas for volumes.
It's a bit exciting for me to see everything coming together. Everything I've done before, fashion, textiles, but also my desires, the creative world, nature, all of that mixes together and transforms my work with these themes that are close to my heart. Themes that I don't choose, but that come to me a little by themselves.
I realise that here I'm more open to nature. At first I thought it was going to be plants, agriculture, what's around me in fact, but in the end it goes further than that. It's more a question of feeling things.
Even though I talk a lot about ecology and nature, I don't want to think of myself as an ecological artist either. I obviously try to work with recycling and second-hand materials, I deal with these issues in my work, so there is a link with ecology, but I try to express it in an artistic way. I don't want to attack people with these issues. What I'm tackling is more a question of our ability to adapt. It's part of being human, but will we survive deforestation, will we be able to keep breathing? Maybe we will, maybe we won't.
We live in a world of anxiety, and I don't want to add to it in my artistic work. I want to live with determination. In what I do, I try to create emotions. Some people may immediately see the problems in the marine world or in the world in general, but others may simply see shapes. Personally, what I always hope is that people who come to see my pieces really have a feeling, and I love it when they express it to me, when they tell me what they see. Sometimes they express things that I hadn't thought of, so that refuels my creativity. In the end, it's still a relationship of transmission.
What are your plans for the future?
Obviously, I want to continue to work with people, to continue to exchange ideas with other people, craftspeople, artists, designers... And also to exhibit more, to create more volumes. Continuing to express what I want to do with these artistic pieces is really important to me. These are things that are really about need, in fact.
The current collection, Fire & Joy, is very much based on the idea of renewal, counter-culture, and generally "dancing on the ashes of the old world". What does that mean to you?
When I saw this collection, I thought of renewal. This phrase, dancing on the ashes of the old world, I thought it was brilliant, this idea of always being in action, always starting over, reinventing oneself, whether it's with clothes, with art, with one's own life. It reminds me of the idea that we can use the old to create something new, to transform it again.
But are we really dancing on the ashes? I have the impression that for the moment we're still dancing on embers, we're not at the ashes yet, there's still fire. This idea implies that we need to make changes that are a bit radical, and perhaps a bit sad in terms of ecology.
It's a bit like the image of the phoenix rising from its ashes, and I find that quite motivating in the end. We're going to look at the past, and think about what we can do for the future. But above all, with a phrase like that, it's also about asking ourselves what we can do today. It's by creating now that we'll create tomorrow. So that's what it evokes for me: giving importance to the present moment.
Joël Dagès
