In Fort-de-France, the 22ᵉ edition of Rendez-vous aux jardins (Rendez-vous in the Gardens) brought together artists, cultural players and citizens around a reinvented garden. Between installations, poetry, music and inspiring speeches, let’s take a look back at an evening where art and living things forge unexpected links.
“Create uncontrollable relational flows.”
This sentence from Que peut la littérature quand elle ne peut by Patrick Chamoiseau ran through the inaugural evening of the Rendez-vous aux jardins, held on June 5 at the Direction des affaires culturelles (DAC) de Martinique.
Under the national theme Jardin de pierre, pierre de jardin, the event transformed the garden of the Villa des Pergolas into a space for encounters and creation.
Artists, architects, institutions, musicians, thinkers and the general public shared a rare moment: a time when the island’s natural heritage entered into dialogue with the arts and the aspirations of a world in transformation.
Gardens in resonance: between contemporary creation and living memory
This year, the DAC garden played host to an original installation designed by architects Habité. Inspired by the stone flows of Mount Pelée, the installation features Pozzolana in a sensitive dialogue with plants, a scenography that will evolve over time.
This setting provided a natural setting for the works of several artists:
– Photographs by Jean-François Gertrude, from the Five Senses in the Garden project, highlighting the island’s remarkable gardens;
– sculptures by Isaï Étifier, working with paper and reclaimed clay, born of a sensory experience in the heart of the Cape Solomon forest.
“The relationship with stone asks us about our anchorage, about transformation, in an increasingly dematerialized world” confided the artist, offering a particular resonance to this edition.
An evening of encounters: when the arts weave another collective narrative
As soon as the evening opened, DAC director Johan-Hilel Hamel reminded us of the team’s philosophy:
“We imagined this evening thanks to Patrick Chamoiseau’s texts, with this desire to create uncontrollable relational flows. All the region’s vital forces are represented here. A work of art, a cultural event, is always born of encounters and friction.
He also paid tribute to the commitment of all the DAC teams, mobilized throughout the year to bring cultural policy to life in Martinique, and particularly in the organization of this unifying evening.
To open the event, writer Manuel Norvat read a poetic text, inviting us to meditate on the symbolic power of stone in the Caribbean imagination and in Chamoiseau’s work:
“Philosopher’s stone, world-stone, talisman capable of disorienting absolutes, opening up imaginations.”
Then Patrick Chamoiseau himself addressed an attentive audience:
“The world is about to undergo radical upheaval. We need to rethink our foundations, our imaginations. We need to enter a plural, creative economy, in which art plays an essential role.”
A strong call to conceive the garden – and by extension the world – as a space in perpetual creative relationship, beyond inherited divides.
“We are not just forces caught up in a system. Art enables us to rediscover meaning, to fulfill ourselves as human beings,” Martinique’s Prefect concluded.
This moment of exchange paved the way for an evening of music, with pianist Maher Beauroy and singer Florence Bodin performing an extract from their Insulae project, a crossroads tribute between Martinique and Algeria.
The public then continued their exchanges in the illuminated gardens, around the works of art, in a spirit of convivial encounter and sharing.
Transmission and re-enchantment: the garden as a space of openness
In addition to this evening event, Rendez-vous aux jardins 2025 offered a rich program of 27 events on the island:
– educational workshops in schools ;
– creative stone workshops (engraving, painting, rocaille) ;
– storytelling walks in remarkable gardens ;
– lectures on Native American petroglyphs and underwater gardens.
The event’s openness to young audiences and the mobilization of eco-places illustrate its potential to renew the link between natural heritage, cultural memory and intergenerational transmission.
A catalyst for renewing the link between arts, territory and society
In keeping with Patrick Chamoiseau’s words, this year’s Rendez-vous aux jardins in Martinique went beyond the simple heritage framework.
It revealed the garden as a political, poetic and relational space – a stage on which to invent a new relationship with the living and with others.
By creating this “uncontrollable relational flow”, the evening of June 5 enabled everyone – artist, cultural player or citizen – to become part of a shared narrative, rich in meaning and open to the unexpected.
A fertile ground for imagining, together, new cultural and civic horizons in Martinique.
