The exhibition Moving Territoires highlights the work of the six laureates of the 12th edition of the Talents Contemporains competition: Aurélien Mauplot, Bilal Hamdad, Ugo Schiavi, Manon Lanjouère, Noemi Sjöberg, and Ulysse Bordarias. Through various media, the creations explore the theme of water, addressing issues related to immigration, geopolitical identity, and environmental and social crises.
Aurélien Mauplot’s Les Possessions questions the concepts of territory and borders by using maps of countries and islands printed on the pages of Jules Verne’s Le Tour du Monde en 80 jours (Around the World in Eighty Days) to represent unstable geographies. In contrast, Bilal Hamdad’s work Nuit égarée (Lost night) tackles immigration by reinterpreting John Everett Millais’s famous painting Ophelia, where a man in stagnant waters embodies the dangers that immigrants face.
Manon Lanjouère, with her installation Les Particules, le conte humain d’une eau qui meurt (Particles, the Human Tale of a Dying Water), illuminates the dangers of marine pollution through cyanotypes. Using plastic materials collected from beaches, she represents endangered marine species. Ugo Schiavi introduces us to Léviathan, a hybrid fountain-sculpture made from recycled materials that evokes the contemporary ecological crisis.
Finally, Noemi Sjöberg’s video One euro to jump now raises awareness of the detrimental effects of mass tourism on our environment. Her divers face those depicted in Ulysse Bordarias’ drawing Il pleuvait sur l’Agora (It Was Raining on the Agora), where fragments of swimmers struggle against a tumultuous landscape set within the democratic space of the Agora’s amphitheater.
In these uncertain spaces, the theme Moving Territoires presents water as a tool revealing ongoing environmental and societal transformations.
Open Wednesday to Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m.
