Exhibition in Brittany Deconstructs Myths of Female Magic

The exhibition "Ma sorcière mal nommée" at the Abbaye de Daoulas in Finistère, southern Brittany, runs until November 29. Curated by Édith Joseph, it explores the figure of the witch as an anthropological object across cultures and eras. The show traces the term's evolution from ancient priestesses and divinators to the European witch hunts of the 15th–18th centuries, fueled by the Inquisition and papal bull of 1484, resulting in over 100,000 trials and some 50,000 victims. It also examines non-Western practices in Benin, Haiti, Vietnam, Mongolia, China, and Japan, where local traditions were often mislabeled as witchcraft by colonizers. Contemporary works include Bjarne Riesto's photographs, Louise Bourgeois's "La Damnée, La Possédée et la Bien-Aimée" (2010), Lidia Kostanek's ceramic pyre "Bûchers" (2018), and Odette Picaud's fabric sculptures. The abbey's medicinal garden, labeled "Jardin remarquable" since 2012, features 800 species. The exhibition highlights ongoing violence against women labeled as witches in India and Africa, including Ghana's witch camps.