A painting of Noah’s Ark fleeing the flood, bundles in a cart pulled by a bicycle: the Louvre-Lens museum is presenting until January 20 a vast exhibition which explores the immemorial links between exiles and creation.
Entitled “Exils, artists’ views”, it resonates some 200 works by classic and contemporary artists on flight, hospitality, crossing, and the different forms of exile: interior, locked up.
Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, Ulysses and his constantly delayed return, the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries… the exhibition “crosses 5,000 years of humanity, and civilizations”, explains the curator of the exhibition Dominique de Font-Réaulx to AFP.
Created at the request of the Louvre, “Exils” is based on the founding texts, Bible, Koran, ancient mythologies or Ramayana (Hinduism), recalls the curator. “At a distance from current events” it nonetheless echoes current issues.
In front of the museum, a boat on which headless silhouettes in charred wood are piled up, as a reference to the makeshift boats used daily by migrants on maritime routes: this work by the Ivorian artist Jems Koko Bi evokes “the question forced displacement and exile, violent and often dangerous.
Gustave Courbet taking refuge in Switzerland, Victor Hugo in Jersey, Edouard Manet painting the escape by sea of the journalist Henri Rochefort, condemned to the penal colony for his role in the Commune, but also Chagall, Picasso, Matisse… “This exhibition allows us to discover major artists from a different angle, underlines the curator.
“Humans move, and exile is sometimes a condemnation, but always also an aspiration,” adds Ms. de Font-Réaulx, quoting the philosopher Etienne Tassin.
In Bassano’s Noah’s Ark (16th century), men and women gather animals and pack up their possessions.
“This is the first climatic exile, and we can be sensitive to it with what happened last winter in the department” of Pas-de-Calais, where floods forced hundreds of families to leave their homes , explains Ms. de Font-Réaulx.
– “Between two cultures” –
The giant model of a devastated street, work of the Syrian Khaled Dawwa loaned by the Mucem of Marseille, tells the fate of Ghouta, a district of Damascus taken over by the regime in 2018 after years of fighting against insurgents, which led to mass exoduses.
“It’s a residential street, it could be in Kharkiv, in Gaza, in Lebanon,” explains the curator.
The museum also presents an installation by Gazan Taysir Batniji, an open suitcase with two mounds of sand, representing this artist living in France “between two cultures”.
“Exiles” evokes the tragedies linked to contemporary illegal migrations. At the entrance, a childish origami boat made with an NGO leaflet highlights the dangers of crossing the Mediterranean to Europe.
At least 1,116 candidates for exile have died or disappeared there since the start of the year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) which has recorded more than 17,000 deaths and disappearances since 2014.
The poet and video artist, Frank Smith, plants objects on a beach in Calais and films the wind, symbol of the “breath that is life”, on this border where 46 people have also died this year trying to reach England.
“The new world’s climax III”, by Cameroonian Barthélémy Toguo (2001) shows giant busts, in reality administrative stamps – “non-stop transit”, “cancelled”, “visas”.
The exhibition also honors immigrants from the mining area: a gallery presents crockery, placemats or football jerseys from their country of origin, lent by residents, some of whom speak in French, Arabic, Wolof or Ukrainian. .
In terms of scenography, everyone is invited to choose their own itinerary. In the center, an island offers visitors “a space of freedom, of rest” facing the “multiple paths of exile”.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 117 million people were forcibly displaced across the world in 2023 due to persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events disturbing public order .
Related News :