Topia • 2025
Sculpture, forged steel, MDF, ink, acrylic. 70 x 70 cm
Topia (2025) conjures a speculative landscape: a mnemonic terrain shaped by the symbolic geometries and encoded allegories of historical gardens. Drawing from the art of topiary, the ritual layouts of broderie gardens, and vegetal cosmologies across Gaul, Brittany, and England, the work reflects on how nature has long been sculpted into systems of knowledge, memory, and initiation.
Porré draws a parallel between cultivated and spontaneous vegetal-as-ornament: from the deliberate shaping of topiary to the natural geometry of mistletoe. A sacred plant in Druidic tradition, mistletoe was believed to offer healing and protection and was often hung as a talismanic charm at thresholds, following folk belief in the power of apotropaic magic.
Within Topia, relics of these vegetal motifs are arranged in mandalic configurations, echoing esoteric diagrams and botanical systems.
Forged in steel, ink, and acrylic on wood, the sculpture borrows the visual grammar of ancient enseignes—ornate signboards once used to signal trades, guilds, and lineages in public space.
Reimagined here as a talismanic object, the enseigne becomes a symbolic shield—an embodiment of apotropaic magic.