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Throughout autumn, the first floor galleries feature works by 7 artists on the theme of animism and native myths. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from a collection of Japanese folk tales and serves as the doorway to a world of beliefs and rituals seen through the eyes of international artists rarely shown in France.
Representing different generations and cultures, they share an interest in connections with the earth, with plants and with an inherent life force. Several recent additions to the museum’s collection are presented (works by Carolina Caycedo, Simone Fattal, Sophie Podolski) plus two site-specific installations made for the castle Hunt Gallery by New-Zealand artist Kate Newby.
Suspended between dream and magic spell, The Serpent’s Eye offers a vision of mankind melded with the natural world. Spirits from Igbo mythology evoked in Chioma Ebinama’s blue-tinted drawings join the company of feminine figures dancing with lion, wolf and bear in sculptures by Kiki Smith.
The same overwhelming meditative thrall of landscape so central to Kate Newby’s artistic practice of collecting, observing and composing also finds expression in Simone Fattal’s endeavour to seize fleeting shapes of clouds on the horizon.
Ultimately, all these poetic perspectives are the fruit of introspection into ecology, renewed faith in ancient wisdoms and the need to find new models for continued existence on our planet.
The Serpent’s Eye was made possible through the generous contributions of Balice Hertling Galleries (Paris), Catinca Tabacaru (Bucharest), Instituto de vision (Bogotà), KOW (Berlin) as well as the Barbara Hammer Estate, Joelle de La Casinière and Catherine Podolski.