Gisèle Durand-Ruiz

The exhibition Fernand Deligny, légendes du radeau is conceived by Sandra Alvarez de Toledo, Anaïs Masson and Martín Molina Gola, with the help of Gisèle Durand-Ruiz, Jacques Lin and Marina Vidal-Naquet.

She was born to a Spanish refugee mother and a Protestant father from the Cévennes. She was ten years old in 1959 when Fernand Deligny and La Grande Cordée arrived in the Cévennes. Her father Numa Durand was a bricklayer; he made friends with Deligny and gave jobs to adolescents from the group. In 1965, the Durand family moved to Soisy-sur-Seine, near Paris, where Deligny found Numa a job as an educator-supervisor.

While attending high school, Gisèle Durand-Ruiz regularly went to the clinic La Borde, where Deligny was invited by Jean Oury and Félix Guattari in 1965. Deligny held workshops there in the company of Any Durand (Gisèle’s sister), along with Guy and Marie-Rose Aubert.

When Deligny returned to Monoblet in the Cévennes in 1967 and decided to found the network, she joined the group. She lived in the hamlet of Graniers with two autistic children, Janmari and Christophe B., for whom she became a “close presence”. She made bread for the network. She drew maps and reflected with Deligny on the act of tracing (he called her “the guardian of maps”). She oversaw the collaboration between the living areas, and with Jacques Lin she actively participated in the development of the territory of Le Serret. She practiced drawing and painting more and more actively, and illustrated several of Deligny’s books (Les enfants ont des oreilles, Singulière Ethnie, Les Détours de l’agir ou Le Moindre Geste). She took part in several exhibitions and also practiced flamenco dancing.

After Deligny’s death in 1996, she assumed joint responsibility with Jacques Lin for the “untraditional and experimental care organisation”, while continuing her work as a painter and dancer.