The artwork “The Dictionary of Received Ideas – Fragments,” created in 2021 for the Bicentenary of Gustave Flaubert, is an immersive installation open to the general public. Designed by artists Françoise Schein and Pierre-Marc Debiasi, it includes the participation of young students in Design, their professor Abir Belaid, and experts.

This space for sharing and exchange was produced during a rich process of individual interpretation and plural appropriation: the textual contents were reworked so that typographic forms play with the meaning of words, creating a back-and-forth between meanings and the visual profile of the text.

The ensemble exposes false ideas, prejudices, stereotypes, ignorances, and inanities that inhabit, often unknowingly, our ways of speaking and thinking. To combat them, remaining faithful to Flaubert’s spirit, this work simply displays them, offering them to the eyes that seek to decipher them.

Participatory realization: 13 students from the Graphic Design department of the Higher School of Arts and Media in Caen/Cherbourg, including Lilit Kharatyan-Letourneur and Angélique d’Abouville, Béanie Aubril, Wesley Câmara, Jonathan Grzywinski, Annahe Harkou, Capucine Laste-Lassere, Lea Monchieri, Erika Mvelle, Léonie Plançon, Enora Plumas, Gaspard Verrier, Tristan Vivien, Jiamin Zhou.

Françoise Schein, visual artist and architect, professor at the Higher School of Arts and Media in Caen/Cherbourg, founder of the Inscrire Association.

Pierre-Marc Debiasi, visual artist and writer, research director at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research), author of numerous works on Gustave Flaubert.

Anne Herschberg Pierrot, Pierre-Marc Debiasi, Françoise Schein

Abir Belaid, design professor
Françoise Schein, artist and architect
Lohana Schein, production manager at Inscrire Association