Following the exhibition Resonant Grounds, presented at the Centre International d’Art et du Paysage on Vassivière Island, Defending Ancient Waters unfolds stories that emerged and then disappeared in contact with bodies of water.

In the CCC OD’s Nave, Hera Byükütaşcıyan offers us a sensitive and poetic reading, taking the Loire river as a departure point. She reveals sedimented layers of history beyond our perception through the axis of body and landscape relationship. The exhibition explores the agency of the non-human, by looking into fragments of social, environmental, and cultural histories and their traces in relation to morpho-dynamics of water.

The protagonist here is the Loire river as a living organism. Within this site specific intervention, an unexpected wave flows within the space, mirroring the movement of the river. The geometric particles on its surface flow in suspension as a constellation, resonating with the notions of fragments of time that appear and disappear.

The Loire river has been home to a wide range of human activities, including sericulture, which made Tours France’s silk capital until the mulberry trees disappeared during the 19th century by being infected by a fungus appearing in the region. For Büyüktaşcıyan, this resonates with her family history, as silkworm farmers in Turkey, whose development was diminished by historical conflicts. A new series of drawings alludes to the materiality of silk and the heritage of this craft and its erasure in relation to body, surface and landscape. Defending Ancient Waters becomes an incarnate commemorative link between timelines, suggesting other ways of reading invisible histories and how we perceive the world around us.

The exhibition, curated by Élodie Strœcken, is a co-production between the Centre International d’Art et du Paysage on Vassivière Island and Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré.

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