On Remembering for a Future, 2022
Installation with watercolors and carpets
To give us a common place to begin as a collective, Jimmie Durham, shortly before his death, suggested that we go to the woods or even a parking lot and sit down and spend some time looking precisely around us – wherever we were. It is a comfortable circle of about a meter and a half. It is a way to introduce yourself to the place and for the place to introduce itself to you. To begin to be in the place. On Remembering for a Future is taking this practice as a starting point.
The carpets are inspired by the Middle East and its traditionally rich floral patterns. They are usually placed in indoor or outdoor spaces to create meeting places – creating portable gardens, recalling the different forces underlying human existence. The flowers and plants represented are a reminder of humanity's increasing control over nature as well as colonization. The circulation of beings allows to draw up a paradoxical history of globalization, between uprooting, abandonment and resistance. These plants placed into new complexities are the traces of a vestige of our past.
On Responsibilities Acquired while on a Stroll in a Garden in Europe, 2022 represents four plants (Oak, Ivy, Butia and Poke) that Alves’ found while strolling through the Capodimonte garden in Naples. Made up of local flora as well as exotics, the garden can be seen as colonial spoils of the Spanish Empire. Among the four plants which compose the carpet, the Butia Palm Tree and the Poke Plant are very personal as her father is originated from the same village named for the Butia and where none now exists due to deforestation. The Poke Plant, from Cherokee territory was one of Jimmie Durham's favorite plants to eat.
On the Need of Remembering Here before the Onslaught of There Began, 2022 celebrates some flora that reminds us of the Atlantic Forest, of which about 93 percent has been destroyed since colonization. But some flora still exist, at the moment: Jequitiba, Guaparuvu, Ipe Roxo, Embauba, and the vine Ysypo marilombre from which a tea can be made for remembering.
Architectural constructions hold us to definitions of a present that as it is built, becomes a past, which defines future relationships of our bodies with other beings relegated to serving whatever is the discourse of the times. On Remembering for a Future, 2022, addresses various aspects of the Seine's river complex history. From ancient Paleo meanderings to Baroque garden features. We are reminded that the Seine has continually redefined itself as human control over the vegetation kept on increasing. The plants of the watercolors are floras quoted in texts intimately linked to Paris and meaningful for Alves. As representations they underline the link between the writings and the possible encounters in the city through different historical periods (Glissant, Mukasonga, Pioche de la Vergne, Porete, Ndiaye, Rousseau, Zeniter).
On Remembering_Exhibition Portfolio at Michel Rein, Paris
On Remembering_Exhibition Archive Link to Michel Rein, Paris
