In Strasbourg, during the Christmas market, Vanessa Garner and Valentine Cotte are betting on a different kind of encounter: one between textile and ceramics, between memory and care. Brought together in a space at 7 rue des Frères, the two artists outline a sisterhood that does not rest on the simple fact of exhibiting together, but on a shared attention to materials and to what they can tell us about our vulnerabilities.

For Vanessa Garner, fabric is anything but a decorative surface. Knotted, braided, wrapped, it takes shape in sculptures where Franco-Thai heritage, family memories and gestures of transmission intersect. The fabrics become ties, literally and figuratively, charged with a memory as intimate as it is sensory.

Valentine Cotte also works to unsettle what seems obvious. With her porcelain armor and chain mail, protection becomes fragile, almost paradoxical. Drawing on a medieval imaginary peopled with female knights, she turns the attributes of warrior power around to speak of wounds, repair and resistance.

Between the suppleness of fabric and the delicacy of fired clay, a dialogue takes shape: how to protect without enclosing, pass on without freezing, make fragility a strength rather than a flaw? The exhibition offers less an answer than common ground, where the gestures of assembling and caring become a way of being together.