Exhibition
catalog

‘ET GRAINER’ – Virginie Garnier & Natacha Arnoult –

Photographer Virginie Garnier and visual artist Natacha Arnoult look into the ancestral symbols and beliefs of traditional cultures to build a first series of images on Seeds. Seeds serve as a metaphor to talk about feminity, fertililty, immigration, world food balance and security, as well as freedom, and thus touch on contemporary environmental and spiritual issues.

Seeds are the tiny, fragile and indestructible beginning point of life and convey the idea of eternal renewal / rebirth. Seeds are free in essence. Whether farmed or not, seeds will always find a ground that will allow nature to spring out /to bloom wherever conditions seem harsh.

Popular and spiritual beliefs attribute divine qualities to seeds. Thus, sesame seeds are the symbol of immortality, round-like-the-moon melons – with their myriad of seeds – represent rebirth, pea sprouts stand for renewal and growth, and fava beans are Mother Earth’s first gifts when spring comes. As for African nutmeg, it brings good fortune. This series shows seeds in such forms as totems, rosary, jewelery or sprouts.

IN SITU – David Japy –

Equipped with a plain black canvas, David has taken all his photographs during walks in different places in Europe. Without cutting a plant, without interfering with the imperfect and harmonious way nature itself consists of, subduing the day light, he has frozen the plants at a moment of their life cycle.
Thus, the gentian, having given all its vigor, releases its faded leaves to better be reborn.
This absence of artifice and the voluntary under-exposure of the photographs invite us to enter slowly into David’s contemplative and sensitive universe. Text : Natacha Arnoult

LA TERRA È VIVA. LA TERRA È FERTILE – GIOVANNI AMBROSIO –

La terra è viva. La terra è fertile. is a chapter of Ius Soli. Campania Felix Delenda est., a documentary photography project on the archeology of the present, through the attempt to tell about the complexity of a geographical area called the Red Zone: 18 cities around Vesuvius, the largest active volcano in continental Europe. Where fertility is one of the fundamental values ​​explaining the density of population on a land doomed to disaster. It’s That same catastrophe that makes the land fertile. The simplest way to visualize the idea of ​​fertility is food. Fruits, vegetables land and then the cuisine. Luigi Cippitelli, a pizza chef who composes his recipes exclusively based on Vesuvian products, constantly repeats the sentence Il Vesuvio vive.

Searching for marks, signs and ruins, clues, remains and signals on soil, the most important action is to collect : on the surface and in the depths of excavations. Once we are ready to dispose things, to organize them to produce a new material, we pass to the act of condĕre: to found, to create, to compose, to describe, to tell, to bury, to plant, to immerse, to put sheltered. We throw seeds, on another land, and they compose a constellation before disappearing in the soil.

Seeds, in Italian translates, by semi, and therefore fertility and birth.

PIXELS – Stéphane Bahic –

Photograph or drawing in charcoal? Black and white? The eye rests on a pineapple not unlike a burning bush, a carrot hanging to its tops, a plain lettuce, a vine without tomatoes reminiscent of a crawling insect. And so, inanimate fruits and vegetables, do you have a soul? There it is, palpable, obvious despite the formal abstraction. Plants come to life through the choice of colours. Minute chromatic pixels escape from still life, grains of pollen blown by the wind to fertilize new lands. Each to their own pantone, essence precedes existence, the pineapple stands tall, the carrot unfolds, the lettuce starts to breath, the lost tomatoes are reincarnated. Stéphane Méjanès (journalist)

OILS (and Disorders) – Caspar Miskin –

Cannabidiol or CBD which is derived from the cannabis plant has no psychoactive properties itself, unlike the better known cannabinoid THC. But with its possibly multi-healing properties, many people, especially those with severe illnesses such as psychosis, epilepsy, chronic pain or other neurological disorders, have been drawn towards it. This is also the case for people with illnesses of which we know less about, such as fibromyalgia, where currently, the only medicine available has strong and sometimes lethal side effects. When you see people close to you with an illness such as fibromyalgia, constantly trying to better understand their disorder, and searching for information that could give them hope of a possible cure, then you can do nothing else but hope with them that something such as CBD could be the answer : a plant based solution with very mild side effects and no addiction risk, which in many
cases is a huge problem. And a problem that pharmaceutical companies are profiting from. But unfortunately, when so much money and marketing is involved, then you cannot help but be a bit sceptic. With the enormous growth in the market of CBD, estimated at $20 Billion by 2024 just in the U.S., then we are also seeing an enormous choice in how it can be consumed or taken. Ranging from power smoothies, lollypops, gummy bears to bed sheets infused with CBD and yes, even CBD tampons. But does it really work or is this just another new trend ? Most medical experts quickly disregard the possibility that many of these products work with perhaps the exception of products where CBD is the main ingredient such as CBD oils. However, clinical trials use much higher doses then what is available for us to buy, at an already steep price that not all can aford. And because of the varying quality of the oils, it is hard to say how much CBD you actually get. The reality is that we do not have enough evidence to know if these small doses work, though many consumers are claiming positive effects. In a way, having little knowledge also means we have yet to discover the full potential of CBD which is exciting. So far, the tests created have had very positive results. With new studies of this cannabinoid and with larger scale trials then hopefully, we will soon have more definite proof on what CBD can actually do, and with that, hopefully cure.

PORTRAITS DE GRAINES – Thierry Ardouin –

The seeds used in agriculture have to comply to standardisation rules and be registered on the Official Catalogue of Species and Varieties of Cultivated Crops in France. Farmers who produce vegetables or cereals for human consumption have to use these certified seeds and must buy them again each year as most are hybrids and therefore sterile. Outside of this official circuit various networks and associations are calling for the free movement of seeds as well as the freedom of seed reproduction. Thus, they contribute to the safeguarding of ancient varieties by commercialising them at their own risk or by exchanging them.
We are therefore in complete opposition with :
– on the one hand certified, standardised, legal seeds which produce vegetables of similar shape, size and colour.
– on the other hand, seeds of natural, rustic varieties adapted to their land, freely exchanged and which produce tasty vegetables of varied shapes but which are de facto illegal.
The seed is a marvel of appearance. It is a perfection of shape and colour. Its morphology is both necessary and strange and able to spark astonishment, wonder or contemplation. Chosen, lit and framed with the greatest of care, these seeds disturb our subjectivity: they become symbols, which, far from a generic picture, question our relationship with origins.

SEEDS – Philippe Vaurès Santamaria –

Cracked, fissured, chapped surfaces. Rough bordering on rugged textures, mineral tones as if they had been scorched by a raw sun. Philippe Vaurès-Santamaria evokes aridity based on an essential element linked to the sedentarisation of man, rediscovering the ancestral codes of a basic diet. Water, cereals ground by hand, age-old practices shared by peoples from all horizons, and time. The hours go by on these heaps left as such to be played with by air and light. And already the dry and shrivelled up contours, the tortured and dehydrated flat tints of desolate matter take shape as if exhausted. In the image of our overploughed earth, tired of being solicited in order to respond to the production-driven madness started in the second half of the 20th century. A drought synonymous with austerity which brings us face to face with a system that feeds as well as destroys. A view which questions the necessity of a different relationship to the soil.

THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE – CARROT – Cristina Jacob-

‘Everything in the world has a seed. The process of genesis and change from an apparently insignificant object opens up a world of boundless possibilities. Seeds are the foundations of food, and food is the foundation of human life. These three photographs are a series of six images showing the interplay of time and liberation. Each seed comes with possibility. Between the seed and its final form there is a journey to be made through light, water and love.’