Pascal Monteil has been a weaver in Tabriz, a ceramist in Kyoto, an icon painter in Istanbul and a boatman in Calcutta: for 35 years, after studying fine art at the Villa Arson (Nice), he criss-crossed Asia and the Middle East in search of old and broken threads to weave another history of painting.

Settled in Arles since 2017, he embroiders 19th-century hemp canvases on his knees, without any preliminary sketch but with writing as the starting point for the stories he will soon tell in tapestry. His thread, according to Christian Lacroix, ‘alternates between gouache, watercolour, glaze, thick oil and charcoal, scarifying the canvas, revealing day after day, month after month [...] processions, exiles, frightened architecture, poets on stretchers, artists getting off their beds, boats for prophets and popes failing under the weight of flowers’.

While the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme will be devoting a solo exhibition in its collections to her large-format works, this artist's book aims to bring together most of her textile works, and includes a conversation with Paula Aisemberg, and texts by Natacha Carron and Vullierme Rayas Richa.