Devenir Fleur ? (Becoming a flower)
While the upheaval of ecosystems and the climate leads us to rethink our relationship with nature and the living world, what can we learn from flowers, their resilience, their constant adaptation to their environment, their sobriety? Vulnerable and essential, they are an indispensable engine of life: they produce the food that humans, animals and insects consume and the oxygen that we breathe.
With scientific advances in plant intelligence and a new approach to living things, their fascination continues to grow - far beyond mere aesthetic pleasure. Symbols of fragility and rebirth, they are becoming a particularly powerful marker to illuminate current issues.
Through the eyes of artists, women and men of twenty different nationalities, "devenir fleur" attempts to shed new and sensitive light on contemporary ecological, anthropological and geopolitical issues. The exhibition brings to light a botany of world history, as well as new forms of attention, sensibilities and thoughts.
In the wake of the exhibition Cosmogonies. Au gré des éléments in 2018, which drew an ode to the invention of an art co-created with nature from Yves Klein to Thu Van Tran, "devenir fleur" reports on the forms of listening that artists, since the 1960s, maintain with the plant. Thus, a new language is sown.
And, the agapanthus, the peony, the flax and the jasmine, the dandelion, the Damascus rose, the peacock flower and the banana flower, are all part of an impulse of resistance, solidarity and communion: a becoming flower.
Artists
Laurence Aëgerter, Maria Thereza Alves, Isa Barbier, Yto Barrada, Hicham Berrada, Minia Biabiany, Melanie Bonajo, Bianca Bondi, Fatma Bucak, Chiara Camoni, Ali Cherri, Jean Comandon & Pierre de Fonbrune, Marinette Cueco, Odonchimeg Davaadorj, Andy Goldsworthy, Nona Inescu, Kapwani Kiwanga, Tetsumi Kudo, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, Ana Mendieta, Marie Menken, Otobong Nkanga, Dennis Oppenheim, Uriel Orlow, Gabriel Orozco, Giuseppe Penone, Pia Ronïcke, Michelle Stuart, Anaïs Tondeur, NILS-UDO, Zheng Bo
