The Napoleon Room is a site-specific projection work by Jeanne C. Finley created In collaboration with Mrs. Cecily B. Finley and Annette Kobak.  Images are projected on the exterior wall and inset window of a small room perched above the Mediterranean Sea where Napoleon is said to have slept.  The projection can be viewed from both inside and outside a building known as The Batterie, on the property of the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France.

The projected images and accompanying sound explore the imagined and documented reflections of those who have gazed, during times of war as well as peace, from the sea toward the room and through the window out to sea.  These reflections take both the form of audio interviews as well as text that flows across the wall and include the thoughts of: Napoleon Bonaparte; Jerome Hill, American painter, filmmaker, and founder of the Camargo Foundation, who served in southern France during WWII; Cecily Finley, the artist’s mother who was stationed on a Red Cross ship off the coast of Cassis during the Allied invasion of southern France; and Jeanne Finley, a Camargo Foundation resident

From the room’s interior, viewers see only the small projected images on the window that replicate contemporary views out to sea from the building.  From the outside, the small window image is viewed surrounded by historical and personal context created by the  images and text projected on the exterior wall.

Thanks to Béatrice Benchetrit, Sumakshi Singh, Lee Renninger, Nicole Archambeau, Patrick McCray, John Muse, and Zoe Jones.