“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” is a series of watercolor drawings representing infants and young children. Dolls or dolls, they play with a blue filament that comes out of part of their bodies, from the head for infants or from their hands for young children.

Maud Louvrier Clerc was inspired here by the studies on the presence of microplastic particles found in the placenta of dead foetuses. Microplastics can have long-term consequences on children’s health, including their growth and immune system cause premature death of the fetus, the first was officially diagnosed in 2020 following an autopsy. “It’s like having a cyborg baby: it is no longer just made of human cells, but a mixture of biological and non-organic entities,” said Antonio Ragusa, head of the obstetrics department who led the first study on the subject. 

If plastic pollution is devastating for the ocean biodiversity, its daily use is also not without consequences for humans, especially in its most fragile form, that of the fetus. At a time of colossal advances in cybernetics, the series «les apprentis sorciers» evokes the ongoing mutation caused by our civilization on all living beings. The blue filament, referring to the water of the origins, represents for the artist the thread of life with which we play today.