Malherbes, Plantes sorcières du milieu urbain

Thibault Franc, a visual artist and writer who lived in Arles for many years and now works as a farmer-artist in southern Aveyron, is devoting more and more of his time to drawing. Over the years, he has developed an intimate relationship with plants and a growing concern for biodiversity. Following a botanical walk with him in the streets of Arles in the summer of 2025, organized by Galerie Lhoste, Éditions Limite asked him to write an unusual guide to urban plants. Invasive weeds in the eyes of public authorities, they are here celebrated for their powers, legendary or proven, as well as for their extraordinary faculties of natural adaptation.
“Going through the whole cycle of a plant makes us grow. I’ve often had the pleasure of sowing or transplanting toxic wild herbs, dangerous plants that I had no intention of using, simply to get to know them, to spend a little time with them, to learn from them. In any case, it’s a first step in taming the powers of these immobile creatures, a longer and more subtle step than simply obtaining their fresh or dried parts in the hope of obtaining an initiatory or recreational experience. As with love, it’s about creating a bond, rather than consuming, and stories about the powers of plants are one of the best ways to learn to observe and memorize their charms and peculiarities. As long as they’re fantasies about inaccessible, exotic or almost literary plants, these stories have no more value than gossip about movie stars. But when we realize that vulgar weeds and commonplace trees have a legendary past and an extraordinary presence, the scales fall from our eyes, we go out into the streets where grasses manage to grow in spite of everything, and the world seems to sparkle with wonder once again.”
This jubilant exploration of a living heritage unjustly scorned or ignored, yet inseparable from our urban existence, naturally led Thibault to imagine a series of original drawings, in the tradition of his customary assemblage works. True visual meditations, they offer readers of his texts a more intuitive counterpoint to historical and ethnological inquiry, a space of friction where signs of pop culture or esotericism hybridize and clash with classical iconography.
This series of drawings will be exhibited at the Galerie Lhoste in Arles, as part of the 2026 Off edition of the Festival du Dessin.
On this occasion, the final model of the book Malherbes… to be published by Éditions Limite, will also be presented.