Living as Lichens: A Symbiopolitical Manifesto
15 March–5 May 2024
Friday, 15 March, 6pm: Opening at La Traverse (Marseille), with the artists and the curator
Laure Vigna, Memorial Tides, printed photograph, 2022
The exhibition Living as Lichens aims to explore the phenomenon of symbiosis as an artistic and political manifesto, through works of artists who collaborate with living organisms and with each other.
Group exhibition with the artists: Yolenn Farges, Charlotte Gautier van Tour, Adriana Knouf, Niccolò Moscatelli, Laure Vigna. Curated by: Colette Angeli.
As we are taking part in an irreversible ecological crisis, it is urgent to find other ways to cohabit and work with the non-human. It is difficult to deconstruct capitalist ideology, which since Darwin’s time has made individual adaptation to a competitive environment its scientific justification. Symbiosis provides an answer: this long-term coexistence between two organisms of different species replaces competition as an evolutionary factor and undermines the very notion of biological and sociological individuality. Just like the lichen, a symbiotic organism composed of algae and fungi, all living beings, including ourselves, are made up of beneficial interactions. Let us learn from this organism, as little-known as it is omnipresent, and from its ethos of cooperation, plurality, and resilience.
In this group show, artists and their works exchange, collaborate, contaminate, and mutually enrich each other. The evolving installations populated by bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms or so-called «pests» question the possibility of an egalitarian co-creation between partners, far from the competitive logic to which the art world is not immune. By weaving such a network, the exhibition functions as a living organism that transforms the mutualism and commensalism of biological interactions into an artistic working method, and finally into a societal model.
Colette Angeli is an independent curator and critic. She lives and works in Marseille, navigating between various projects. She is the co-founder of the art workers collective Polynome, with which she leads projects of exhibitions, events, and texts. Her reflections are driven by an ever-present political and intersectional commitment. The research she conducts with Polynome mainly focuses on the commons and issues related to property. Through this lens, the collective explores social and democratic practices that emerge in contemporary creation in response to late capitalism. In parallel, she is particularly interested in the connections between human and non-human living beings, gestures and know-hows, and countercultural movements.
Free entry — Guided tours upon reservation: office@catherinebastide.com | co.angeli@hotmail.com
