07 > 21.03.20
CN D Pantin
A proposition by Juliette Pollet, heritage curator, head of the collection of the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (Cnap)
“Há Terra! (Earth!)” takes its title from the film by the Brazilian artist, Ana Vaz. The exclamation firstly echoes with the fracas of colonial conquest and announces the brutal appropriation of so-called “new” lands. But, where the narrative takes place, in the high grasses of the Sertão, in the backcountry of the State of Goiás, this cry can also be heard as an affirmation of the claims of the Landless, or dispossessed. The works brought together here derive their strength from this dialectical dynamic; they are forms and counter-forms; they expose violence, domination and bereavement, and are here being presented as if they were talismans, antidotes, or formulas of resistance.
Running against lethal hierarchies and systems of organised predation, they designate friction zones, but also the possible passageways and alliances between the mineral, vegetable, animal kingdoms and humanity. From the beaten earth of a foundry in Ouagadougou to that of a forgotten cemetery in Senegal, from the gold mines in Guinea and Portugal to the silt of riverbanks in La Réunion, underground ramifications can be perceived, emerging from colonial exploitation and the resistance of myths.
The earth has been delved down to its historical depths, and transformed by alchemical operations. At the bottom of a sieve, shit, ashes, gold, grains – “transgressive substances”, to adopt the terminology of the anthropologist Michael Taussig in his Museum of Cocaine – nourish the land with new cosmogonies.
Cavea, adaptable and nomadic furniture by Olivier Vadrot (belonging to the Collection of the Cnap) will welcome some of the CN D’s activities from 30.01 to 21.03 in Studio 12.