Lavender Snows
2 June–19 August 2023, Marseille
With the artists: Nienke Baeckelandt, Sarah Caillard, Lola Daels, Jacques di Piazza, Maëlle Dufour, Valérian Goalec, Lucie Lanzini, Charlotte Lavandier, Muesli Collective, Angyvir Padilla, Kristina Sedlerova Villanen, Paulius Sliaupa, Maarten Van Roy
Curated by Maud Salembier
The exhibition Lavender Snows brings to Marseille a sample of the vibrant, emerging art scene from Belgium. Taking into account La Traverse’s focus on ecological issues, the curator Maud Salembier has chosen to subtly tackle these issues without addressing them head-on. The works presented all convey a tension between solidity and fluidity, statics and dynamics, and question the impermanence of matter, which exists as a continuous becoming. They reveal preoccupations concerning many artists today, and inevitably recall the way our planet is warming and liquefying, from permafrost to glaciers. They also evoke the ravages of mass construction and its dizzying tectonic of domino effects.
Anthropologist Tim Ingold thinks about our being in the world in new ways, and his work on the topic of solid fluids in the Anthropocene* seems relevant for considering certain parallels between environmental disruption and contemporary creation. Objects and forms, he argues, are in constant transformation and in dynamic relationship with their environment, rather than being fixed and static entities. This idea is reflected in art forms involving the use of materials and processes which are or appear unstable. Similarly, artists who work with elements such as water, ice, light or organic matter can be regarded as exploring ideas of fluidity and transformation. The porosity between the animate and the inanimate, between animal, mineral and plant life, are also paradigms that they wade into. Finally, this thinking can also be wielded to challenge the economic norms and conventions of the contemporary art world, questioning the notion of the artwork as a fixed and immutable object.
The exhibition contemplates the transitional states of things, exposing our own finitude, that of our species, but also that of art. The title, Lavender Snows, synesthetically combines a fragrance, a colour and a tactile sensation. It also recalls the purple reflections of the snows immortalized by the paintings of a Friedrich or a Monet, in the midst of the massive industrialization of Western society and its consequences today.
