Published on : 18/09/2022 – 00:10
In Senegal, the Tara laboratory boat is doing its final research on the Casamance river in the south of the country until September 19, before returning to France on October 15. But in Dakar, awareness of the role of the ocean and the need for its protection continues, especially with the artistic exhibition Black bodies, absorption and radiation at the French Institute, which will remain hung until next January.
From our correspondent in Dakar,
In a dark room, the ocean ripples on the wall while “sound meditations” are played. A creation by the artist Antoine Bertin who sailed aboard the sailboat-laboratory Tara off the coast of Argentina. He is interested in the collaboration between science and art: I typically think art can really help make science more lived. Me, that’s what I like regarding music, in the sense of being able to experience fascinating abstract subjects or scientific subjects, but in a physical way. »
In addition to recording sounds underwater or in the laboratories on board, Antoine Bertin translated scientific data into music: ” The rosette, therefore, is an object with tubes which will go down deep into the ocean, take water from different depths, and so I then take this data. The deeper we are, the more you have a note that will become serious. The pitch of a musical note is going to be completely proportional to the depth of this tool. »
The rest of the exhibit is on the outside walls of the French Institute. Photographs, drawings, lithographs… a dozen artists are exhibited, including Aurore de la Morinerie. His rather dark drawings, which represent the movements of waves and plankton at the very bottom of the ocean, are inspired by observations under a microscope during his passage on the schooner: ” When I saw all these forms, I found that it was such an extraordinary and varied territory of forms, that drawing and making monotypes on this subject with a whole range of blues, therefore, in the great depths until on the surface, I found it fascinating. It’s a door that allows me to work on abstraction and finally to interpret a somewhat underground, somewhat invisible world. »
Over the course of the exhibition, the works at first in blue and cold tones of the abyss become more and more luminous and colorful, explains Ken Aïcha Sy, the curator: ” It was also a way to raise awareness among all audiences to ultimately make a scientific approach more accessible. We are in a critical situation of water pollution, pollution of the oceans, it is also a way of ringing the alarm bell. And we also need the ocean for food, but also for oxygen. »
The exhibition will remain on display for six months, until January 30.
