Realized in collaboration with lAlienor Massenet, nose at IFF, the Compagnons du Tour de France carpenter, and Philippe Médioni, achitect.

Karine Bonneval's project is based on the manipulation of living things by humans. Her plastic research finds its origin in the notion of exoticism.
At the time of the cabinets of curiosities, then greenhouses, plants were acclimatised in the West to form the background of botanical gardens. These treasures of travel were collected and inventoried, direct witnesses of man's hold on nature and of Europe's power over the so-called indigenous countries. These harvests are also the expression of a search for sensations and pleasure. The colonisation of living things as told in travel accounts remains a topical issue. Today's explorers are like the big pharmaceutical and food-processing groups that appropriate natural species to transform them into industrial products. Similarly, on a smaller scale, and without us being aware of it, the plants in our gardens and interiors most often come from faraway lands and meet our need for plants as a bulwark against our own society.
The system presented at La Maréchalerie acts as a mise en abîme of the space thought out from the perpetual desire of an imitated nature. Quote from À rebours by J.-K. Huysmans, written in the middle of the Romantic century, at the time of the Universal Exhibitions, the title of the exhibition explicitly refers to the Baroque universe around Des Esseintes, a reclusive character devoted to the reproduction of the world, inhabited by an obsession with the transformation of the living.
What remains for the visitor is the experience of wandering through a fantastical vegetal and olfactory environment, on the fine line between the natural and the artificial. In this enclosed space reminiscent of a greenhouse, as in a whimsical microcosm, the plants are anthropomorphically augmented. The plants are disguised by additions that evoke a human aesthetic (nails, eyelashes, hair) and by recreated perfumes, these colonised plants bring the plant back to the human in a violent way. Produced in collaboration with lAlienor Massenet, nose at IFF, the Compagnons du Tour de France charpente, and Philippe Médioni, achitect.

Karine Bonneval's project is based on the manipulation of living things by humans. Her plastic research finds its origin in the notion of exoticism.
At the time of the cabinets of curiosities, then greenhouses, plants were acclimatised in the West to form the background of botanical gardens. These treasures of travel were collected and inventoried, direct witnesses of man's hold on nature and of Europe's power over the so-called indigenous countries. These harvests are also the expression of a search for sensations and pleasure. The colonisation of living things as told in travel accounts remains a topical issue. Today's explorers are like the big pharmaceutical and food-processing groups that appropriate natural species to transform them into industrial products. Similarly, on a smaller scale, and without us being aware of it, the plants in our gardens and interiors most often come from faraway lands and meet our need for plants as a bulwark against our own society.
The system presented at La Maréchalerie acts as a mise en abîme of the space thought out from the perpetual desire of an imitated nature. Quote from À rebours by J.-K. Huysmans, written in the middle of the Romantic century, at the time of the Universal Exhibitions, the title of the exhibition explicitly refers to the Baroque universe around Des Esseintes, a reclusive character devoted to the reproduction of the world, inhabited by an obsession with the transformation of the living.
What remains for the visitor is the experience of wandering through a fantastical vegetal and olfactory environment, on the fine line between the natural and the artificial. In this enclosed space reminiscent of a greenhouse, as in a whimsical microcosm, the plants are anthropomorphically augmented. Disguised by additions that refer to a human aesthetic (nails, eyelashes, hair) and by recreated perfumes, these colonised plants bring the plant back to the human in a violent way.

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