AFRICA
MATRICIDE
Embedded Files
Africa takes a look at the African continent, both amazed and crude. Amazed, because Africa is a fertile paradise of biodiversity and beauty and the cradle of humanity, born in the rift, the vagina of the earth. Crude, because Africa is a continent raped, slaughtered, poisoned, looted with impunity by empires, in cynical disdain of its inhabitants. Africa is what started it all by the grace of evolution, and will end by the rapacity of man. The exhibition is part of the trilogy The 5th Season.
AN EXHIBITION IN TWO STORIES
AD IT WAS SO
The story of Grace, in seven paintings, an Ethiopian orphan who, at age 33, inherits the home of her father whom she never knew.
As she explores this strange house, she more or less follows the biblical journey from creation to paradise and God's doubt one Sunday night ("Oh God, I think I've really fucked up").
In this part, I try to clear God of predestination and to gives keys to understand that, if He is at the origin of the Creation, He has managed to create the conditions of free will.
MENSCHDÄMMERUNG
The Twilight of Humans is the story of Abel, an African man whom Grace meets in her house.
In six tableaux, he travels through the destruction of the African continent, ends up being the last man in the world and makes his own burial ground in the rainforest.
The story goes through five plagues of man-made collapse of humanity with climate change, including forced migration (The Deluge).
Abel's story is inspired both by Cain and Abel and its Girardian interpretation of the enemy brothers, and by the story of the man of the hole, the sole survivor of an Amazonian tribe whose body was recently discovered lying under a carpet of bird feathers.
THE SPEECH I DIDN'T SAY
I usually introduce my exhibition, during the opening, with a short two-minute speech. This was not the habit of the gallery where I exhibited. So I never gave that speech.
"I don't want to take up too much of your time, I wish to tell you two things: thank you and be careful.
Thank you: for being here, thank you for the loyalty of those who have followed my work and my cries since the beginning. Thanks to you, Dido, but also to those who support me in the shadow, Majra, Lisle, Bernard and there are others.
Be carfeul : it's been half a century that observers of the world, sociologists, philosophers, demographers, a few economists, climate and energy scientists have been warning us about the deadly wall we are building ourselves and towards which we are rushing at high speed.
We are in great danger. The living, the humanity and also the humanism. The children who live today on earth. What freedom will they have? What suffering will they endure?
It is beginning. What is happening today in Africa and what is foreseeable is hell on earth. Yet Africa was our cradle. Paradise was Africa.
The 5th season, the trilogy of which Africa is the second part, is a cry of alarm that comes out of my mouth, my heart and my guts.
I implore you, my dear friends: accept to look at yourselves as you are, and make your inner revolution. Because to blame your enemy sister or brother is vain.
To save yourselves. To save the children. To save the living. To save humanism and freedom.
I love you. Explore this exhibition, these details and meanderings. If you do so, I will feel that I have done my tiny part. Thank you."
A NEW STYLE
The style of the paintings is a new step in the integration of the creation tool AI Midjourney: all the backgrounds were created with Midjourney, and the characters with Second Life.
If I feel there still a long way to go to achieve a result that satisfies me, it is one of the first standardizations of the use of this tool in the world of creation. I go beyond the fascination for the random creative compositions of Midjourney, to put Midjourney intentionally at the service of my creation.
The writing style is more syncopated than usual, cutting the story with several levels of interpretation with inserts of scientific facts, or personal memories or questionings. I readily admit to having been amazed and inspired by the American author Jenny Offill.
In doing so, the text becomes more activist and orients the reader towards a better understanding of the my intention.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse