L'Herbe aux yeux bleus

"L'Herbe aux yeux bleus"

from Saturday, April 1, 2023 to Sunday, May 28, 2023

La Chambre, Strasbourg (France)

Familiar with the Grand Est region, where she has carried out a number of works on the memory of landscapes - particularly war landscapes - Sophie Zénon has embarked on a new project focusing on obsidional plants. In botany, this term refers to plants propagated during wars and population movements. The artist is thus traveling through Lorraine, the region of Europe that saw the most troop movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, and which today boasts the highest number of obsidional plants, with 21 species listed. By working on these plant migrations - and in turn on those of men and women - the artist faces the challenge of giving form to history through images, of making tenuous traces appear through the means of science and technology. Her physical immersion in the landscape, her heightened attention to living things and the direct use of harvested or cultivated plants in the making of her works resonate with both the poetry and the tragic memories of places. Her multi-faceted artistic approach ranges from plant imprints (photograms) to stampings of shot tree trunks, landscape photographs and the reactivation of archives. Supported by botanists specializing in the subject, Sophie Zénon links fields of knowledge, natural kingdoms and time periods through the threads of an organic, symbiotic work. The creative residency (2020-2022) with La Chambre and the exhibition provide an opportunity to exchange ideas and ideas.

L'herbe aux yeux bleus is the name of a plant introduced to Lorraine by the Americans during the First World War, the Mountain Bermudagrass (Sisyrinchium montanum Greene).



Thanks



L'herbe aux yeux bleus was selected and supported by the Fondation des Artistes patronage committee. The artistic team benefits from the “mission de territoire” residency support scheme for the visual arts of the Grand Est Region for the period 2021-2023, as well as from the Capsule scheme of the French Ministry of Culture.