EARTH, FIRE and DREAMS by Andrée Weschler and Javier Canales 2017-2021

Earth, Fire and Dreams is a contemporary artistic meeting in a frame of history and tradition. The project is the result of a collaboration between the French artist Andrée Weschler and the Chilean artist Javier Canales, who have been devoting themselves for four years to creative research and artistic practice in relation to territory, body, earth and history with clay as the unifying element. It is the material with which they pay hommage to ancestors and contemporaries, from the origins of the Austral Aboriginal peoples to the concept of the "Forgotten". Always in search of new aesthetics, they explore the various possibilities of contemporary expression offered by clay. Javier Canales is inspired by an old tribe that lived in Tierra del Fuego in the extreme south of Patagonia. 6000 years ago, the Selk'nam were close to nature, respectful of the earth, and would have had a lot to teach us. Andrée Weschler pays homage to artists and models who have been forgotten in order to immortalise figures that society venerates. Her work is a tribute to those who have worked on the statues that line the roads in the countryside and mark important places for the protection of passersby.

The collaboration of Earth, Fire and Dreams has been exhibited at:

Museo Martin Gusinde in Puerto Williams, Navarino Island, Chile

Ateliers Mommen, Brussels, Belgica

Biennale Arte Dolomiti, Italy

Regional Museo of Magallanes, in Punta Arenas, Chile

Musée de la Poterie de Betschdorf, France 

Casa Azul Cultural Center Gallery in Punta Arenas, Chile

Anitya // Skandhas, 2015

A Collaboration with The Observatory & Elizabeth Lim & Andrée Weschler

ANITYA // SKANDHAS is the fourth in this ongoing interdisciplinary experiment, exploring the relationship between sound and other forms of performative expression. The Observatory and performance artists Andrée Weschler and Elizabeth Lim explore the Buddhist concept of the Five Skandhas -- form, sensation, perception, impulse, and consciousness. 

Sounds directly linked to physical movement and actions by the artists are filtered and manipulated by members of The Observatory. Connections and ruptures between sight and sound, cause and effect, are dramatically heightened, raising questions about the Skandhas, the true self and what makes us human.

As an art experiment, ANITYA // SKANDHAS feeds ancient concepts through contemporary practice to better understand the human condition.

Latent Spaces, Haw Par Villa Warehouse 

Pictures by The Idealist

Bijoux - Jewellery

Andrée Weschler's work encompasses different mediums mainly performance, video and installation. However she also enjoys working with clay. Though these pieces are worn as jewellery, they should be seen as sculptures as each piece is one of it's kind and signed by the artist.

Weschler exhibits a collection of rings carved in porcelain, sandstone and glass, made during the last ten years. The rings bear the imprint of her multiple travels by their color, their shape and also their material used. According to her, wearing a porcelain ring enters the wearer into the world of performance, the fragility of the ring giving a new dimension to the relationship of the body and space.

 

La Carte de Tendre (The Map of Love), 2011

La Carte de Tendre was a French map of an imaginary land called Tendre produced in the 17th Century, which depicts the "geography of love" according to the Precieuses  of that era: the River of Inclination flows past the villages of "Billet Doux" (Love Letter), "Petits Soins" (Little Trinkets), and intrepid travelers brave the dangers of "Le Lac d' Indiference" (Lake of Indifference). The villages, roads, and topographic features in this allegorical representation trace the myriad facets of love and its associated perils. 

Lynn Lu and Andrée Weschler revisited the map of love with its successes and pitfalls and propose a new reading of the Carte of Tendre with video installation and performances art.

Ref. Carte de Tendre, 17th Century print, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Drawn by Melle de Scudery

Engraved by François Chauveau

  

Amputation, 2006

Amputation is an installation of medical tools hypothesizing failure as the naissance of healing: one needs to be sick before one can heal. The installation’s tools belonged to Andrée’s family doctor who was simultaneously caregiver and spectator to her and her family’s lives. This work is done in his memory

Singapore Art Museum

 

If you Imagine my Dear that ... , 2011

“If you imagine my dear that is going to last forever the season of love, you got it all wrong” are the lyrics of a French poem

Si tu t’imagines, by Raymond Queneau, written in 1950 and interpreted by Juliette Gréco.

The images and the material of the video & pictures are taken from a surgery the artist went through. The surgeon, after the surgery gave the video and said: “ Since you are an artist, I thought that you will be interested in it.” The trauma of the surgery over, it took three years to face the brutal reality of the images and dare to look at them and finally do an art work with it.

French poem translated in English:

“If you imagine, if you imagine, girl girl,  if you imagine, that is going to last forever the season of  the season of season of love,you got it all wrong girl, you got it all wrong

If you think my dear, if you think  that your rosy complexion, your hourglass figure, your cute biceps, your nails, your nymph’s thigh and your light-hearted foot, if you think my dear that is going to last forever, you got it all wrong girl, you got it all wrong

Beautiful days go away, the beautiful festive days, suns and planets, all turn in circles, but you my dear, you walk straight, towards what you cannot see, approaching very sneakily, the swift wrinkle, the heavy fat, the triple chin, the limp muscle, come on pick roses, the roses of life and may their petals be the slack sea of all the happiness. Come on pick, if you do not,  you got it all wrong, girl girl, you got it all wrong”

 

Domesticated in her Animality, 2000

“The video lasts 45 minutes. I look in the video camera as if it is a mirror. The video camera becomes a conduit from the private space to the public place.
I pluck my eyebrows, one hair after the other, one by one. At first the process is constructive, the eyes get bigger, the face prettier. But the process does not stop and suddenly removing hair one by one becomes destructive. 
A simple act of everyday becomes definitive.”

Andrée Weschler, 2002