2026 / Fragments of love (Éclats d’amour)

Solo exhibition, from June 3, 2026, to February 15, 2027, Postal Museum, Paris

Inspired by the museum’s collections, particularly historical correspondence, Laurent Pernot has conceived an exhibition dedicated to “love in times of war.” By bringing to light fragments of intimate words that span conflicts—from the Siege of Paris to the current war in Ukraine—he presents a poignant vision in which the enduring nature of emotional bonds is set against the backdrop of history and the passage of time.

The works brought together for this carte blanche explore, in various forms, the circulation and beauty of words of love in times of war. In Lettres aux vents, letters carried by balloons during the Siege of Paris are reinterpreted on lightweight paper and assembled into aerial mobiles, where fragments of sentences, accented with silver leaf, seem to continue their journey.

Documents, photographs, and texts are collected, transformed, and transposed onto different media, blending eras and voices within a single composition. The words—sometimes excerpts from letters by writers or anonymous individuals—also unfold in space in suspended form, their altered letters evoking the test of time and the violence of conflict as much as the strength of emotional bonds.

Elsewhere, everyday objects—such as a mailbox frozen in ice—expand on this theme by suggesting a moment in time that has been frozen, where feelings endure despite the upheavals of history. The voices of Pavlo and Viktoriya Matyusha—separated by the war in Ukraine and having decided to write letters to one another—are audible in the exhibition. Finally, fragments of correspondence appear as projected text, creating a continuous flow that bridges these old words with contemporary language, like a conversation that continues into the present.