CNP Assurances, sponsor of the Angers University Hospital Complex’s (CHU d’Angers) project to improve the hospital environment, has enabled the FRAC* of Pays de la Loire and artist Elsa Tomkowiak to enliven the walls and ceilings of the CHU’s medical intensive care unit. The work, which took the artist six months to complete, is being officially unveiled today.
This masterful and colourful work of the Nantes-born artist Elsa Tomkowiak should foster closer ties between families, patients and healthcare teams by stimulating lively conversation about the work. The huge coloured canvases hanging on the walls and ceilings of the medical intensive care unit’s corridors will help make the all-too-often cold and impersonal hospital environment much more welcoming. The CHU d’Angers has been committed to a cultural policy for its patients and caregivers since 2005. With more than 176,000 patients annually and 6,400 employees, the CHU is the largest employer in France’s Maine-et-Loire department. It also helps train future healthcare professionals.
Through this sponsorship, CNP Assurances is committed to improving the hospital environment for patients, their families and healthcare professionals. With nearly 3,000 employees in France, CNP Assurances is present in Paris and the French regions through six regional centres (in Angers, Paris, Lyon, Nancy, Toulouse and Marseille). The Angers centre has 486 employees, making CNP Assurances a major player and high-profile employer in the region.
A 2005 graduate of Dijon’s National Academy of the Arts, Elsa Tomkowiak is the recipient of a number of awards conferred by the Regional Directorates of Cultural Affairs (DRAC) of Bourgogne and Pays de la Loire and by the city of Nantes. The work of this 36-year-old artist is anchored in and determined by the spaces she invests. Blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture, the colour gamuts of her works seem to unfurl through space.
*Fonds régional d’art contemporain