Tropiques IV
Photographic reproductions of an equatorial forest are hung within the context of an (actual) forest at the gates of Paris. The perspective illusion thus obtained is in its turn photographed by the artist; the trick being unveiled to the observer thanks to the bulldog clips visible on the borders. Tropiques is a photographic series investigating the change of landscape across geological time, making visible the results of scientific studies according to which 50 million years ago our continent was covered in an endless rainforest. If such transformations used to occur across geological eras, what could today’s rapid climate changes caused by anthropic action determine?
Untitled (Study on Matters and Fire)
Through a system of layered photographic perspective illusions, the black-and-white video presents a bleak, real wasteland located beyond the outskirts of Paris. A fire bursts, slowly consuming the multiple sheets of paper, and revealing the unravaged landscape behind them, as well as the fiction of photography itself. The fire is, what enables the destruction of the landscape and what brings it into being at the same time. Moreover, the video unveils the artist’s method, consisting in the creation of her works of art through their destruction, exposing the process of their own disappearance. Any doubt about how the perspective illusion is constructed then falls away, but the question of the true nature of our landscape (and of its future) remains.
