Insert from the artists' Contaminations series
Artist statement
"Contaminations" is a series of photos started during the Covid-19 crisis.
The spine appeared to us as a strong symbol of these new physical and social distances born and experienced during this period of isolation. These distances profoundly affect us by transforming our relationship with others and the world. The spine is a mental projection on the perception of our own bodies, marked by fear, suffering and the search for protection.
For many years we have been exploring the question of touch, its sensoriality, its language, its vital strength, its relationship to the world.
The question of the skin arises more ardently today, how to apprehend it, perceive it, live it, feel it. The spin, this plant horn, pricks our eyes, sinks into the skin. In the form of a mental image, it goes through us, and it seeks to hybridize with our human elements, skin, flesh and bone. This symbolic hybridization with spines aspires to protect our own body. This body that contaminates and protects itself at the same time. The spin is also a defence that symbolizes life.
By appropriating the spines of the plant, we project excrescences on our body that gradually follow an epidermal evolution, to get closer to a form of animality.
Artist Biography
The couple artists Gregory Lasserre and Anais met den Ancxt work under the name Scenocosme.
Their works came from possible hybridizations between the technology and living world (plants, stones, water, wood, humans...)
They have exhibited their interactive installation artworks at ZKM Karlsruhe Centre for Art and Media (Germany), at Daejeon Museum of Art (Korea), at Museum Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Canada), at National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Moscow), at Contemporary Art Museum Raleigh (USA), at Bòlit Centre d’Art Contemporani (Girona) and in many international biennals and festivals : Art Center Nabi / INDAF (Seoul), BIACS3 / Biennial International of Contemporary Art of Seville (Spain), Biennial Experimenta (Australia), NAMOC / National Art Museum of China / TransLife / Triennial of Media Art (Beijing), Futuresonic (UK), WRO (Poland), FILE (São-Paulo), ISEA / International Symposium on Electronic Art, EXIT, VIA, Lille3000, Ososphere, Scopitone, Seconde nature (France)… and in various art centers : MONA (Australia), MUDAC, Fondation Claude Verdan (Lausanne), Musée Ianchelevici (Belgium), Kibla (Slovenia), Banff Centre (Canada), Villa Romana (Firenze), Utsikten Kunstsenter (Norway), Watermans (UK), Centre des arts d’Enghien-les-Bains, Gaîté Lyrique (Paris) etc.
You can follow more of Scenocosme's work at www.scenocosme.com and follow them on Facebook via /scenocosme.