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“Selon notre regard” (As we see it)
2 minExhibition “Selon notre regard”, video works by female artists in the French public collections – curator: Liberty Adrien.
With Lida Abdul, Mali Arun, Shirley Bruno, Edith Dekyndt, Rebecca Digne, Marguerite Duras, Anne-Charlotte Finel, Camille Henrot, Salomé Lamas, Elodie Pong, Raeda Saadeh, Annelies Strba, Ana Vaz.
The exhibition “Selon notre regard” explores our perceptions of the relationship between humans and nature.
The captivating scenic intensity of these intertwining moving images constitute the sensitive narrative of our world like a collection of dreams. We find all the poetry of the romantic landscape: the aesthetics of melancholy and strangeness, the expression of contemporary worries and emotions: those of the climate emergency, political conflicts, the fall of urban utopias and the place of women in societies.
These video works by contemporary artists are from the collections of the National Centre for Visual Art (Cnap) and the Regional Contemporary Art Fund 49 nord – 6 est (Frac Lorraine), the Ministry of Culture.
“Selon notre regard” is being presented in 2021 in Germany by the Instituts français and their partners in Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Munich, Tübingen, Prague in the Czech Republic and Budapest in Hungary in 2021/2022.
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2/12Mali Arun « Paradisus », 2015
"You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for God knows that, in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."
Video produced as part of the “La première image” (The First Image) order by the Cnap with the G.R.E.C (Groupe de recherches et d'essais cinématographiques Film essays and research group)
Video, black and white, sound, Duration: 9'27'', French sub-titling
Photo credit: Cnap
FNAC 2015-0434 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© droits réservés / Cnap
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3/12Shirley Bruno « An Excavation of Us », 2017
The shadows of the Napoleon army fall on the walls of a mysterious cave named after Marie Jeanne, a combatant in the Haitian revolution, the rebellion of which is told by a local myth. The battle that took place in the cave became the most successful slave rebellion in History.
Video, black and white, sound, Duration: 11’11’’
Le Fresnoy Studio national des arts contemporains, Port-a-Pimente (Haiti)
Animation Assistant: Alexandru P. Badelita
FNAC 2019-0372 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© droits réservés / Cnap /
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4/12Rebecca Digne « Tracer le vide » (Tracing Emptiness), 2017
On the Italian and French coasts, people pull ropes, attaching them to the territory. It is symbolic of our connection with the ground on which we grew up and which sketches our future.
Video, colour and black and white, silent, Duration: 8'
Super 8 and 16mm film transfer
Photo credit: Galerie Escougnou-Cetraro
FNAC 2019-0081 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© Rebecca Digne
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5/12Marguerite Duras « Aurélia Steiner (Vancouver) », 1979
Giving something to see from what is missing: that is probably the obsessional search in Marguerite Duras’ films. Like her stories and novels, they explore absence (absence of the another, the absence of meaning). If Marguerite Duras has brought some of her stories to the screen, this film from 1979 does not originate from any independent text. The story inserts itself under the images, or beyond them; they never accompany them.
Video, black and white, sound, Duration: 48 minutes
Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (FR)
Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (FR)
© Benoit Jacob Vidéo
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6/12Anne-Charlotte Finel « Entre chien et loup » (At Twilight), 2015
As the name indicates, this video was filmed at the time day disappears. Filmed almost blind, the landscape seems covered by a heavy grain. Deer and hinds graze at the doors of a metropolis. These wild animals seem to lose their prestige here. Their bodies are peeled and they graze in a forest decor pierced by the city lights. The deer, dog and sometimes the wolf belong to the bestiary of melancholy.
Video, colour, sound, Duration: 5:48 min
Musician: Luc Kheradmand
FNAC 2017-0578 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
Photo credit: Jousse Entreprise
FNAC 2017-0578, Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© droits réservés / Cnap
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7/12Camille Henrot, « Cynopolis », 2007 – 2009
The camera follows a pack of stray dogs that have taken up residence at Saqqara, site of the first Egyptian pyramid. The editing sets these images alongside those of archaeological digs that detail the gestures of workers on the pyramid restoration site, as well as those of women sorting plastic in the Cairo recycling centre.
Video, colour, sound, Duration: 13'06"
Filmed on the Saqqara site in Egypt
FNAC 09-583 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© Adagp, Paris / Cnap
Photo credit: Galerie Kamel Mennour
FNAC 09-583 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© Adagp, Paris / Cnap
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8/12Ana Vaz « Há Terra! », 2016
Há Terra! is a meeting, a hunt, a diachronic tale of viewing and the future. Like in a game, like in a high-speed chase, the film sways between character and earth, earth and character, predator and prey.
HD Video, colour, sound, 16 mm film transfer, Duration: 12'47"
Sertão Region (Brazil)
Production: Spectre Productions, Rennes (France) (Producer: Olivier Marboeuf, Associate Producer: Cédric Walter)
FNAC 2017-0524 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© rights reserved / Cnap
Photo credit: Ana Vaz
FNAC 2017-0524 Centre national des arts plastiques Paris-La Défense (France)
© Ana Vaz / Cnap
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9/12Edith Dekyndt “One second of silence (Part 1, New-York)”, 2008 - “Selon notre regard”, view of the exhibition at the Institut français in Berlin, February 2021
In the world of perceptions revealed by Edith Dekyndt, everything leads to believe that silence reigns supreme, conducive to moments of reflection. Whereas life offers hardly any silence, in One Second of Silence (Part 01, New-York) (2008), the transparent flag floats in the air leaving its surface to be confused with the surrounding sky as if it was the emblem, and gives to metaphorically hearing a “noisy silence”.
Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (FR)
© E. Dekyndt
Photo credit: Liberty Adrien
© Liberty Adrien
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10/12Lida Abdul, “What we saw upon awakening”, 2006 – Raeda Saadeh, “Vacuum”, 2007 - “Selon notre regard”, view of the exhibition at the Institut français in Berlin, February 2021
The video “What we saw upon awakening” shows a dozen young men, dressed in black, who are trying to clear the scattered debris of a house in Kabul destroyed by the bombings, a ruin showing the armed conflicts that have been wearing down the region for dozens of years. Like some of her previous works, the choice of silence is the fruit of a conceptual strategy that is meant to allude to the implications of political decisions that affect those not allowed to speak, the homeless and other dispossessed.
Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (FR) / Photo: Lida Abdul / © L. Abdul
“Vacuum” shows the artist vacuuming in the desert between Jericho and the Dead Sea, the absurdity of the gesture referring to the Greek mythology hero Sisyphus and refers to life in Palestine.
Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (FR) / Photo: Raeda Saadeh / © R. Saadeh
© Liberty Adrien
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11/12Lida Abdul “What we saw upon awakening”, 2006 – Salomé Lamas “A Torre”, 2015 - “Selon notre regard”, view of the exhibition at the Institut français in Berlin, February 2021
“What we saw upon awakening”
16 mm film transferred to DVD, colour, sound. Duration 6’53’’ / Collection 49 Nord 6 Est – Frac Lorraine, Metz (FR) / Photo: Lida Abdul / © L. Abdul
Salomé Lamas “A Torre”, 2015
Perhaps Kolja’s experience of merging her body (human) with a tree (nature) by venturing into an area between sky and earth is due to the pureness of her spirit, the grandeur of idiots or the madness of mystics; or all at the same time? Maybe it’s a symptom of the enlightened – or simply a sophisticated suicide?
Project made using elements of the film "Extinction" (2018) directed by Salomé Lamas and produced by O Som e a Furia, in co-production with Mengamuk Films.
Performance by Christoph Both-Asmus ("The Tree Walker") / HD video, black and white, sound. Duration: 8' / FNAC 2017-0387 Centre national des arts plastiques / © Salomé Lamas / Cnap
© Liberty Adrien
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The Institut français and the exhibition
“Selon notre regard” is a proposal by independent curator Liberty Adrien and the Cnap proposed as part of La COLLECTION. An initiative proposed by the Institut français, La COLLECTION brings together 135 turnkey proposals for the French cultural network abroad, which are easy to broadcast and modular, and span the fields of performing arts, visual arts and architecture, urban planning and landscape.