Hospitality
When the ancestral forest supports, inspires, and gives care to contemporary society by inviting itself into the heart of our daily lives.
Through the Kodama project, reconnecting with trees does not happen exclusively in the forest, but also in our living spaces, closer to our daily lives, through installations of images, words, sounds, and smells that fit just as well into the care pathway of a medical facility as into the customer experience of a commercial establishment, as long as common values and intentions animate the places that host them.
This is the case with this collaboration with Maison Aribert, whose chef draws his culinary inspiration, philosophy, and commitments from the nearby Vercors forests where he was born. Since its opening in 2019, this hotel-restaurant, with two Michelin stars and one Michelin green star, has carried the vibration of the Yakushima forest within its walls through a permanent exhibition of my texts and photos.
This experience opens up time and space to the energy of this ancient forest, in a contemplative and meditative journey that echoes the spirit of the tree, inviting us to reconnect with the forest, rediscover its virtuous powers, and open our minds to the importance of recreating this vital osmosis with the world of trees.
To raise awareness on forest
through a customer experience
Maison Aribert, France
Guide Michelin **
Restaurant and Hotel
Permanent photo installation (2019)
Thank you to Chef Christophe Aribert for his trust and continued support. Thank you to Laetitia Debeausse for initiating and leading this collaboration. Thank you to the teams at the restaurant for their enlightened professionalism, to the restaurant's customers, and to the buyers of the prints who make the Kodama project possible.
Free admission. Photos available for purchase upon request at the reception desk. Pigment printing on 100% plant-based Japanese washi paper. Size: 40x55 cm. Editions of 5, numbered and signed.
To raise awareness on forest
through a customer experience
Twelve hotel rooms turned into a forest meditation place
Yadoya Hiraiwa Ryokan,
a traditional Japanese inn located in Kyoto
Permanent photo installation (2022)
Photos©Frederic Leyre
A selection of 20 large photos prints from Sugi Meditation series and Mangrove Meditation series are dispatched in the tatami rooms and entrance, to create a meditative mood in this cultural heritage of Japanese architecture, a representative example of a tea house built with wood.
I removed there the 12 photographs exhibited during the Kyotographie Festival, and I re-used all the tree branches of Kitayama Daisugi's scenography to create a pergola on the house's rooftop to bring the shadow to the building during the warm summers of Kyoto. All parts of the former exhibition have been reused, even the dried cedar leaf that covers the soil around the house, as mulching.
Behind the scene of this meditative installation, there is an up-cycling project.
To raise awareness on forest
through a customer experience
[Ki:] Restaurant, Kyoto
Organic Cuisine
Restaurant
Permanent photo installation (2021)
Photos©Frederic Leyre
The photos "Silence" and "Kodama" found their natural place in the middle of the main room of this organic restaurant, open in a renovated wooden machiya, a traditional Kyoto house.
Here, the team cooks vegetables that come directly from their family farm. By collaborating with soil, water, and wind in the fields daily, they create an authentic cuisine experience inspired by nature. Such an inspiring way to invite people to reconnect with the soul of the forest, with the Living, using the gifts of Mother Earth to feed our bodies, minds, and souls, as the forest does.