- The Résonances exhibition is held until April 4, 2021, at the Opale Foundation, in Lens, Switzerland.
- It brings together the collections of two sisters, one dedicated to contemporary Aboriginal art and the other bringing together modern and contemporary Western artists.
- Kiki Smith's sparkling red echoes the traditional palette of Gulumbu Yunupingu. "The great American artists allow the public to go to Aboriginal artists," explains, pragmatically, its curator, Georges Petitjean.
"It's more poetic than scientific": that sums up Résonances well , from the mouth of its commissioner George Petitjean. A beautiful exhibition nestled in the village of Lens, in the Swiss Valais, which brings together contemporary Aboriginal art and some of the big names on the international art scene.
At 1,100 meters above sea level, housed in the glass facade of the beautiful Opal Foundation where the magnificent landscape of the Châtelard hill and Lac du Louché is reflected, it is another set of mirrors that drives two collections. Those of two sisters, Bérangère and Garance Primat, one bringing together modern and contemporary Western artists, but also African, Asian and Aboriginal, the other constituting one of the most important collections of contemporary Aboriginal art in the world.
Matches and rebounds
You have to see the stars of Gulumbu Yunupingu, which is inspired by the stories of the Yolŋu people, and the celestial bodies of the feminist artist Kiki Smith, vibrate on three funeral posts to measure these correspondences in the Baudelairian sense of the term. "Like long echoes that merge from afar (...) Perfumes, colors and sounds respond to each other," says the poem. Here are the colors and materials, and the same need to connect deeply to the wild, mysteriously chatty.
Black for the skin, white for the bones, yellow for the liver, red for the blood. The traditional palette of Gulumbu Yunupingu represents the primordial elements of the deceased and the stars are all souls called to populate the sky. The sparkling red of Kiki Smith ( Red light ) seems to take the leap, and further, engraved on cyanotype, another cyan blue work ( Light of the world ) of the engraver and sculptor gives distribution to the Water point of Bill Whiskey Tjapaltjarri.
Resonances, not influences
"The great American artists allow the public to go to the Aboriginal artists", explains, pragmatic, Georges Petitjean. Fifty creators populate this exhibition, organized as a declaration of love for Aboriginal art. And a real plea to defeat prejudices on an art too often considered "folk, decorative" according to the commissioner, while it is the oldest form of continuous artistic expression in the world, spanning 60,000 years.
So do not look there for the genealogy of influences, as we did for Picasso and African art. The walk here is only resonance of themes, common inspirations. As between this colorful rainbow snake by John Mawurndjul and this other dark reptile charged with matter ( The Snake ) by Anselm Kiefer. In both cultures, the animal is a mythological being which inspires admiration or repulsion. “The starting point is humanity. It is the principle of the universality of art ”, explains Georges Petitjean.
Sororities
Hence this impression of intimacy with these poems sung from generation to generation in a culture yet so distant. Here, for example, is the story of the Seven Sisters , painted by three women from the Pitjantjatjara people, which echoes the Seven Pleiades and Orion in Greek mythology. Chased by Nyriru / Orion, the sisters thwart his tricks by running all night, then eventually escape to the sky, forming a constellation. One of the many stories of the "Dream" or "Dream Time" (Tjukurrpa), which indicates in aboriginal culture a mythical time, the era that precedes the creation of the Earth.
To these women-constellations who try to escape the clutches of a vicious man are answered the trompe-l'oeil undulations of Bharti Kher, an Indian artist who whispers another story of sorority. His algorithm for secretly telling the truth is a kind of large circle where hundreds of bindis are stuck, these self-adhesive jewels worn on the forehead by Hindu women. If it is only here the bindis have forms of spermatozoa fleeing the central point of what is discovered an immense ovum, returning all at the same time an impression of quiet force and vibratory energy.
Art and spiders
Nature is another of the many red threads that weave the exhibition. The parched earth, emptied of its water by the Chinese artist Gao Weigang ( Prophecy ) responds to the organic and round proliferation of folded mylar leaves (a polyester film used in particular in food and recognized as toxic) and filled with light silver from the United States Tara Donovan. Further on, the same chromatic echo shows the multiplicity of circles drawn in white on a black background by Betty Muffler Middy Mobbler, who paints the streams of water under the ground that only her healing eye can see and feel ( Heal the country ).
The words themselves resonate, at the same time as things: the receptacles woven by the spiders of Tomas Saraceno respond to the funeral posts of Naminapu Maymuru White, and it is the same word in Aboriginal language to designate art and spider web ("Rarrk").
Consensual
At the end of the visit, we tell ourselves that the bet attempted by the Primat sisters, Georges Petitjean and the late Ingrid Pux, one of the three curators of this exhibition - who died suddenly a few weeks before its opening - is successful. We want to go dig a little deeper into the paths and works of these Aboriginal artists who have sown so many stories in our heads. In a gentle way, by defending itself from any "politics", the exhibition succeeds in restoring letters of nobility to this art long forgotten, even mocked, considered "childish".
This is perhaps what some visitors will regret: that the exhibition does not relate the struggles it took for these artists to defeat 30 years of prejudice. As if this pretty dialogue without backwater was not also a competition with the number of limited places. It would undoubtedly have been a much less consensual and sweet red thread.
- Resonances , until April 4, 2021, at the Opale Foundation, in Lens (Switzerland)
Culture
How to represent menstruation in the rules of the art?
Culture
Deconfinement in Paris: The Giacometti Institute awaits its visitors for a tête-à-tête with the disappeared works of the sculptor
- Australia
- Contemporary art
- Swiss
- Foundation
- Exposure
- Culture