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OCEANIA


2018

Vai ora a te atua, 2018

Oil on paper (detail)

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OCEANIA
2018

Memory

“I wanted to know how the Polynesians managed to crisscross the Pacific Ocean for thousands of years, over thousands of kilometres, navigating west to east, on sailed pirogues without any instruments.”

Jean-Claude Teriierooiterai, linguist

Abstracts

"This work is placed under the sign of the stars. For it is a real shame that humans, city-dwellers for the most part today, are now deprived of the age-old spectacle of the heavens. (…)

But nostalgia isn’t the reason for the celestial influence under which I place this work and the exhibition based on it. My celebration of the stars pays homage to the immense astronomical knowledge of the Austronesian peoples, the ancestors of the Oceanians, who, guided by stars, on board the most sophisticated vessels ever imagined by Sapiens – pure arrangements of Nature, free from the slightest hint of metal – discovered all the archipelagos of the world’s vastest ocean.

All this, hundreds of years before our so-called 'discoverers' kicked off the very recent European colonial era, whose traces still haunt this world. As our lot, of the likes of Bougainville, Cook and Wallis, opened up maritime routes for gunpowder, the ancient cultural orality of the Oceanians found itself relegated to the status of prehistory, whose protagonists were mostly a band of animist man-eating savages."

Extract from L'Errance et le Divers, 2018, Éditions Gallimard

Works

OCEANIA 4168
Fau Poe, Étude, 2018

Iipona site, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands
Oil on paper
76 x 56 cm

OCEANIA 4169
Baie de Vaitahu, 2018

Atelier
Oil on canvas
76 x 206 cm

OCEANIA 4171
Vai ora a te atua, 2018

Atelier
Oil on paper
130 x 260 cm

OCEANIA 4038
Corail de feu, 2018

Tahuata, Marquesas Islands
Submarine work, pastel on canvas
56 x 76 cm

OCEANIA 4056
Tiki et le Banian, Étude, 2018

Taaoa valley, Hiva Oa, Îles Marquises
Oil on paper
76 x 56 cm

OCEANIA 4034
Baie de Puamau, 2018

Atelier
Oil on canvas
76 x 206 cm

OCEANIA 4049
Mei Fuyapin, 2018

Fatu Hiva, Marquesas Islands
Oil on paper
76 x 56 cm

OCEANIA 4044
Marie-Noëlle Ottino, 2018

Atelier
Oil on paper
41 x 31 cm

OCEANIA 4053
Pierre Ottino-Garanger, 2018

Atelier
Oil on paper
41 x 31 cm

OCEANIA 4060
Jean-Claude Teriierooiterai, 2018

Tahiti
Oil on paper
41 x 31 cm

Maps

OCEANIA 4156

Making-of

Illustration Making Of
Baie d'Anaho, 2018

Nuku Hiva, Îles Marquises
© Gwen Le Bras

Illustration Making Of
Corail de feu, 2018

Tahuata, Îles Marquises
© Gwen Le Bras

Illustration Making Of
Route de Manueva, 2017

Hakahetau, Ua Pou
© Pascal Erhel Hatuuku

Film by Zoé Lamazou

Image and sound: Gwenaël Le Bras

Books

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