VOYAGE | VOYAGE

A DISORIENTING CONTEMPORARY ART
Maison de L’Amérique Latine
Paris, France

February 9th to April 28th

Monday to Friday from 10am to 8pm
Saturday from 2pm to 6pm
Free admission

CURATOR:
Albertine de Galbert

ARTISTS :
Francis Alÿs | Fayçal Baghriche | Alberto Baraya | Pauline Bastard | Leyla Cardenas | Giulio Delvè | Aurélien Froment | Ana Gallardo | Juan Fernando Herrán | John Isaacs | Suwon Lee | Jorge Méndez Blake | Alexander Ponomarev | Fernando Prats | Julie Vayssière | Shingo Yoshida

Travel is a choice, a rite of passage, an involuntary exile, or a simple consumer good.

It is both the place left behind, and the place yet to be discovered, a suspended time holder of the possible. Leaving. In order to discover oneself, to find oneself again, or to experience otherness. Taking the necessary distance for another understanding of the world. Stretching time to let the unexpected happen. Resisting effectiveness and profit. Leaving by necessity or obligation, running away, or sometimes, getting lost.

The wealth of travel or exile iconography through History, is a symptom of a universal obsession for the Elsewhere, a utopia, in the etymological sense, of the Origin or the final destination. Travelers of all times, compulsive archaeologists hunting for virtual or concrete “souvenirs”, have fed it with numerous samples of virgin forests, lush vegetation, deserts, or singular and mysterious objects. These collections, as many scars shown proudly, form a collective mythology of the Elsewhere as an answer to an unsatisfying everyday or to the great existential issues.

However, the simplification and acceleration of transport, mass tourism and the proliferation of communication tools, have paradoxically disabled the evocative power of these images, abandoning them as empty shells to the flow of media.

“Voyage Voyage, disorienting contemporary art” explores the notion of displacement as a way of « using » the world. Inspired by a tribute to Francisco de Miranda, a precursor of Latin American emancipation and a great traveler, the exhibition presents the work of artists from Latin America, but also from France, Italy, Japan, Algeria, Russia, etc…

In order to represent the space in which they evolve, many contemporary artists borrow from travel its forms (trips, expeditions, maps), its iconography (virgin places, jungles, deserts) or its methods (anthropological, archaeological or browser).  However, the presented artists take a distance from reality and from this overused subject. By twisting the image of the heroic explorer and introducing an element of poetry or a piece of the absurd in their practice, these artists reactivate the emotional response to the idea of travel and exploring. Their work offers a new take on geography, fictional spaces through which the viewer travels, disoriented.

Albertine de Galbert, Curator of the exhibition.