In a sign of the times, the pARTage association celebrated its twentieth anniversary by mobilizing artists around global warming and the many crises already besetting humanity. “Global WARming: the fight for a decent world” was the theme on which some sixty artists in residence worked. Among them were eight students from Mauritius and fourteen visitors from a dozen countries as varied as Japan, Iceland and Brazil…
Dominique Bellier
The pARTage association has often focused on land art and the environment, during the workshops it has organized since its creation in 2003. Created by Krishna Luchoomun, who lives in Flic-en-Flac, these events have regularly taken place in this large coastal village, often on the public beach, to reach out to the many walkers in this season.
pARTage is 20 years old, and like young people of this age, the world before them is proving particularly anxiety-provoking. While the intentions of this residency were to address the crises of our time, linked to the impact of global warming on our lives (floods, food and water shortages, the spread of epidemics, etc.), as well as to growing inequalities, for the artists it was as much a question of denouncing bad practices as of calling for a more decent world. After two weeks of workshops, the open-air exhibition took place on December 2 and 3, on the water, on the beach and under the trees in front of the Flic-en-Flac police station.
Hope and denunciation
Many artists have turned waste to good account, such as Nirmal Hurry, who has built a pirogue of plastic bottles joined together with plant straps, so full that you can’t get on it… This symbolic craft denounces the absurd uselessness of single-use packaging and the phenomenal quantities of plastic waste that litter our beaches after every weekend… Arvin Ombika, for his part, looked at the pollution caused by the textile industry, while Rosalie Baya made a parasol from UHT bricks to “put the earth in the shade”.
Seeing large syringes planted at the foot of a tree, one imagines high-dose injections of pesticides into the Mauritian soil, but Pamela Sunee was thinking more of humans sucking vitality from the earth, like drawing blood from a donor. Among her most spectacular creations, Mother’s Cry illustrates Mother Nature’s despair, with a female figure made of leaves and branches, surrounded by garbage and floating on a makeshift raft. Another floating installation, a giant red hand by Sultana Haukim, reminds us that there is still time to say stop to the inequalities, massacres and abuses that are depleting the planet. Other messages of hope: Icelandic artist Monika Frycova invites us to enjoy the present moment on a pirogue transformed into a convivial space, while Angèle Angoh extends the roots of a tree with immense multicolored braids…
