Fort Saint-Jean, MUCEM, Marseille, France
https://www.mucem.org/programme/exposition-et-temps-forts/laure-prouvost
Video artist Laure Prouvost creates poetic installations in which images leave the screen to meet the viewer through objects, sculptures and materials. Her language is dreamlike, evoking surrealist imagery. It also subtly suggests the values dear to the artist: the celebration of life and its transformations, the fluidity of everything that links us, human beings, to our equals, to our predecessors, to the environments we inhabit, to flora and fauna.
For her carte blanche at the Mucem, the artist drew inspiration from a number of objects discovered in the museum's storerooms, breathing new life into them and taking them on a journey of magic and metamorphosis, in a sensory celebration of life and the stories that weave it.
To this end, the artist has continued his exploration of glasswork and underwater photography, creating an original video with snorkellers in the calanques of Marseilles.
His works - created specifically for the exhibition - will be shown in places usually inaccessible in Fort Saint-Jean. The public will be invited to take a stroll through the fort's walls, where they will be treated to a host of heritage and artistic surprises. Visible from the Old Port, a sculpture-whirligig installed at the top of the King René Tower will mark the exhibition. From the chapel to the casemate, near the montée des canons, via the exhibition room overlooking Fort Saint-Jean, visitors will discover three other monumental and spectacular installations, in which everyday objects, sometimes evocative of the Mediterranean, its fauna and its flora, will be displayed.
Flora will appear, disappear or metamorphose according to the visual and poetic magic tricks devised by the artist.
