Nâmbo
All discourse uses concrete spatial forms to give itself life and meaning; a zoo is a spatial form which attracted me, and I took photos in several zoos in France and Belgium over a year. Zoos are places where the natural world is made exotic, artificial and staged, and various processes of human imagination that work behind the scenes in our societies are used to present the natural world to the public.
This fantasy version of the natural world that fulfils its viewers’ expectations is created using presentation techniques that have been developed since the age of discoveries; colonisation and natural history have made large contributions to the view of the natural world as something that can be scaled-down and reconstituted in museums. Our civilisation thus creates a sense of domination, built on its capacity to bring into its midst a wild natural world from far away and to reduce it to a series of tangible museum exhibits, thus stamping the natural world with culture.
Thus, the natural world, taken out of its context and uprooted from its original territory is redeployed in a flexible form, with its rough edges smoothed ready for mass-consumption.
Artificial and real plants and trompe-l’œil versions of tropical forests are used to create spaces that are a mish-mash of real places, with a tendency to create an “authenticity” that aims to appear more truthful than reality.
Zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums and anthropological galleries construct and, above all, fictionalise the relationship between humankind and the natural world.
Oriane Thomasson.
Translation: Chris Bourne.
This portfolio was Highly Commended by the jury at the “Propositions d’artistes” competition in 2018.
© Oriane Thomasson, série Nâmbo, 2018