The exhibition displays notebooks and diaries of artists, writers and philosophers. These are more than just sketchbooks or drafts. Most have been intricately worked, assembled and structured, even adorned, which makes them unique: they are single copies, never printed as such.

The objects are not shown based on chronology, but on appearance: visual and pictorial affinities justify the correlation of, for instance, a cuneiform tablet and one of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré’s works. Beyond text and substance, universes written, drawn, traced and colored are shown in notebooks and diaries creating visual ties – a pictorial friendship – among one another.

The exhibited contemporary works are essentially part of the MAMCO (Geneva Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art) collection and from the Martin Bodmer Foundation, which lend the exhibition the historical perspective.