Photographer
Véronique Mati
Text
Micha Christos
CARMIGNAC FOUNDATION
Porquerolles
ITall began with a farm immortalized in Godard’s film, “Pierrot le Fou” in 1965. The architect Henri Vidal then transformed the building into a villa and raised it to view the sea. The Courtade estate thus appears surrounded by thirty- five hectares of vines whose wine always delights connoisseurs. Édouard Carmignac fell under the spell of the estate and imagined making it a place dedicated to the arts. It was in 2014 that the Barani workshop and then the GMMA agency gave birth to this unusual place of the Art Foundation by freeing up 2000m2 of space under the house without its contours or the landscape being modified.
Inside the villa, the spaces expand and unfold in the shape of a cross and, in the center of the museum, a transparent water ceiling allows light to penetrate and illuminates the spaces thus immersed. The Port-Cros National Park is the first land and sea park in Europe.
The islands of Porquerolles and Port-Cros benefit from a high level of protection given the exceptional nature of their sites and the presence of numerous protected species. Villa Carmignac is part of a series of concrete, sustainable and ecological actions. It benefits from the “Esprit Parc” label awarded to establishments which are committed to the preservation and promotion of national parks.
The garden was designed by landscaper Louis Benech as a “non-garden”, a place of nature in which the Foundation endeavored to generate a balance preserving pioneer species alongside the rarest plants. Olive trees thus rub shoulders with species of dis tant origins.
On the beautiful Island of Porquerolles, off the coast of Hyères, the Carmignac Foundation presents the exhibition “The lnfinite Woman” which combines major works from the Carmignac collection with exceptional loans from private collections and public institutions (TATE, Musée d’art Moderne de Paris) as well as two produc tions created specifically for the exhibition (France-Lise McGurn, Paloma Proudfoot) and four new works never before presented to the public (Sarah Ball, Chioma Ebi nama, Chitra Ganesh & Naudline Pierre). France-Lise McGurn also designed the exhibition poster and the catalog cover.
The title of the exhibition “The Infinite Woman” takes its inspiration from an epony mous work by Shahzia Sikaander. T hroughout a thematic journey made up of more than eighty works, female figures appear in their sacred and nurturing form, as spiders or cyborgs but also as objects of desire. Around sixty artists from all times, from all origins, from all spaces and from all genres use different artistic techniques, from video to sculpture, from painting to ceramics, from textiles to photography. New feminine stories are thus born, filled with power and enjoyment.
Mythical, fatal, amorous, strong, sensual, angelic or demonic, the woman in the patriarchal vision of the world has seen her soul and her being under mined or glorified in the mists of time. Goddess or whore, monstrous or sublime, the feminine image poses fundamental questions of power and sexuality.
A stay on this divine island facing the infinite sea puts into perspective all the limits to magnify freedom of expression through the bodies celebrated in the uninhibited poetry of the feminine in its flesh and its light.