Repairing the World
2018-2019
Retrospective, installation and vidéos
This exhibition has been created at the request of the Espace Culturel de l’Hôpital de Tonnerre, and features the first retrospective of Emmanuelle Michaux’s works.
Within the context of the theme “Taking Care” (one that is appropriate to the venue), Emmanuelle Michaux offers an exhibition, the title of which is inspired by an essential tenet of Hebrew philosophy, the tikkun olam, or “repair of the world”, and which stresses that the suffering and imperfections of beings and things are inherent in the creation of the world itself, and that it is therefore incumbent on each of us to heal and repair those imperfections, however modestly.
On a journey through artworks, collages, videos, photos, poems, and installations, in which the theme of light is ever-present, Emmanuelle Michaux contributes her vision of a reassembly of the great web of life. At a time when the broken and the worn out are discarded, when images are forgotten as soon as they are saved or shared on social media, and when we attempt to banish death from our surroundings, the artist on the contrary aspires to gather together all those fragile little signs, however trifling, that we are of this world, and to sublimate the time of our passage.
For this occasion, the artist has created a large project — Life Is But A Breath — covering 140m2 , a collection of safety blankets suspended in space: gold side on the way in, silver side on the way out. A symbol of life and of light, the space between these large, mobile surfaces suspended from the ceiling evolves along with the movements of its visitors, in the midst of faint sounds reminiscent of so many breaths of life.