Wild Flowers, 2001

by ANDREE WESCHLER (FRANCE) and CHUA KA-INN (SINGAPORE)

It started with collaboration between two artists and the landscape, a dialogue among the three elements. Having come from two very different environments, it was their first visit to the Kangnung landscape. Thus begins the communication between nature and human experience.
The intention of the artwork was to extract a line from the landscape, to make simply a drawing, adding or erasing. They started to rework the original beauty of nature, changing the form of the field of dried autumn flowers, according to the way the nature guides them. The flowers, the most beautiful part of the plant, were stripped bare, revealing only the once hidden thin dried stalks, stems painted red.
As the work progresses, perceptions became varied and interchangeable. New experiences, discoveries and visions became important in the process of creating an artwork out of nature. 
The idea was to create a sexual landscape, an exchange of nature with human nature. Where the beauty of the nature invokes in our senses a feeling of sensual desire, a desire to be one with nature, sexuality, a most basic pure form of human nature, is invoked in the landscape.

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