Marie ouazzani et nicolas carrier • nuances forêt, 2024
Bourse du travail - Valence
Bourse du travail - Valence
From 5th July to 22nd September 2024
The Bourse du Travail is an exhibition space devoted to contemporary art. Each year the City of Valence launches a call for projects for its summer exhibition.
The theme of this year's exhibition is Nuances, and the exhibition will explore this notion - the temporality, tonalities and perspective it suggests - in an age when binarity is inundating our daily lives.
The winning artist duo Marie Ouazzani and Nicolas Carrier have responded to this theme with Nuances forêt: an exhibition that transforms the Bourse du Travail into a forest in all its nuances. Somewhere between the natural and the urban, Nuances forêt is a climatic fiction about the environmental crisis and our relationship with our surroundings.
The exhibition is curated by Magalie Meunier, who worked with the city to select the entries, choose the artists and set up the exhibition.
The exhibition : Nuances forêt
The Nuances forêt exhibition invites us to explore the Bourse du Travail, transformed by the artists into an ecological science fiction where nature and urbanisation cohabit. While the square in front of the building lets the sun warm the cobblestones, the Bourse is plunged into the darkness of a damp undergrowth, where electric vegetation has replaced the stone, imposing itself on the architecture.
The artworks, in a dialogue between existing pieces and new creations, plunge us into a post-apocalyptic atmosphere in transition, illustrating the environmental anxieties caused by the disruption of our ecosystems.
The artists invite us to enjoy a moment suspended in time by quietude, or even inaction. Rest becomes a form of resistance against overactivity and a means of overcoming the current ecological crisis. The forest, representing a place of transition or natural healing, offers a moment of pause that allows us to step back and take stock, to imagine a brighter future.
This summer, you can also visit the exhibition Hydro météore by Marie Ouazzani and Nicolas Carrier to La Halle - Centre d'art contemporain de Pont-en-Royans from 16/07 to 21/09 (open on tuesdays and fridays 16h - 19h, wednesdays and saturdays 9h – 12h & 14h – 18h & by appointment).
Marie Ouazzani and Nicolas Carrier