Q u e    reste  -  t - il ? 

Exhibition in collaboration and dialogue with Mehdi Melhaoui

Saint Loup Chapel - Siona Brotman - Jan/Feb 2023.

 

 

The invitation to exhibit in La Chapelle St Loup, ancien  place of worship on the pilgrimage route  directed us towards the idea of evoking in the form of a journey , the notion of chaos generated by human activities and the way to remedy it by rethinking the sacred. If chaos has been pejorative since the dawn of time and the advent of monotheistic religions, the fact remains that any scientist assures that it should be the norm because it is the very process that gave rise to life on Earth. The order established by humans is unnatural,  and constitutes the real threat to Nature which is born of movement, of an eternal metamorphosis where nothing can remain fixed. This permanent transformation makes that the harmony, the balance, the constancy wanted by the man is vain and dangerous. Appropriating natural resources under the pretext of taming the wild, this unstable and changing environment,  de  shaping the Earth and all living beings is a real sabotage which leads us straight to the cataclysm. We project our own experiences of sociability onto the living and have established norms such as ecosystems that enclose each species in a defined niche, a limited and compartmentalized territory. This antropization of the world defines the instinct of ownership which has generated the legitimization of the exploitation of each natural parcel to the detriment of all the other organisms hostages and captives of humanity.

Between balance and imbalance, the exhibition invites us to stroll through a rough and wild maze  which finds its source outside the Chapel to extend linearly towards the choir of the building. Organic structures echoing the architecture and pointed vaults guide the visitor into a fluctuating space, less contained within the strict limits of the building. Everyone experiences real unstable and destructive "chaos" on this path, engendered by man. Fragments of the damaged world, taken from the site, are given to be seen as so many observations of our violence and question us about our role towards Nature.

  This journey is strewn with pitfalls and visions of desolate landscapes forcing  to become aware of the disaster. In this tumult, a mise en abyme allows appeasement. By reconnecting with the essential, everyone can  truly feel the Earth in perpetual metamorphosis, and as part of him/herself, each or each species carrying within him/her a part of the Earth that he passes on to the next.

Chapels within the chapel designed as enveloping capsules, soft cocoons, offer themselves to the visitor as places of contemplation or ritual. These spaces make you think, reflect, and allow you to reconnect, or to commune in unison  with Nature, yourself and all the living to find an original and common memory. . 

A necessary rewilding that allows us to feel and consider the Earth as the ultimate space of the sacred, our past, our present and our future.

​

Karinka Szabo-Detchart and Mehdi Melhaoui.