“Anthology of Landscapes” is the compendium of a genealogical
research on the Western idea of landscape addressing the economy
of gendered, colonial, and racial discourses embedded in this concept
across different historical contexts. Staged as an exhibition, the research
is presented through a series of works documenting its unfolding
course with the aim to uncover a more nuanced understanding of the
complex and multifaceted relations which tie bodies and the land.
Landscape, rather than a historical pictorial subject or a specific
kind of image, is a way of seeing which, to this day, has been deeply
naturalized into our perception. In the West, however, the concept of
“landscape” was formulated for political scopes during the Renaissance
and it has been picked up by statesmen over centuries to be adapted to
the different political, cultural and identity needs of their governments -
first for countries and later for nations - making landscape, rather than
a beautiful scene to be observed, a powerful ideological construction.
Later on, this specific representation of land also served as an early
capitalist emblem for the market of capitalized prosperities, while
being turned as well into actual objects of value, like in the case of
the 18th century Dutch landscape paintings which were made to
demonstrate the wealth accumulated as a result of the country’s
colonial activities. Landscapes are also heavily gendered, from the
Greek myth of Europa to the contemporary trend of attributing names to
natural phenomenons. The Western history of human-land images is a
construction which has been used to carry and purvey the naturalization
of ideas regarding race, class, gender that ultimately converged in line
with the modernisation of capitalism.
Drawing upon a critical analysis of the historical conceptualization of
landscape as a precursor to such a process in Europe, “Anthology of
Landscapes” presents a series of works that serve as documentation
of the unfolding of the research. A painting reproduces a section of
the atlas of text and images which was the result for the installment
of the project. The central body of the exhibition takes the form of a
library in which the practice and materiality of painting is asserted as
a tool for research. On the shelves is displayed part of the anthology
of the exhibition, composed of documents and books rematerialized in
the form of painted objects, these last replicating the original object in
their weight. The installation is introduced by the reproduction of the
preparative sketch for one of the views created by Alexandre Desgoffe
to decorate the ceiling of the Labrouste room in the Bibliothèque
de l'Institut national d'histoire de l'art in Paris, the first major library
in Europe illuminated by daylight. Around the space, handkerchiefs
(foulards) are printed with quotations which serve as text and caption
for the exhibition, while reconnecting to the history of the textile
accessory which, in the 17th century, was preferred over paper as a
support for mapmaking. A final group of works comprises six paintings
reproducing pages extracted from the science fiction novel “The Left
Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin. This novel which, more than
others by the same author, addresses the consequences of the use
of the notion of landscape in the creation of national boundaries and
identities, summarized in the beautiful lines pronounced by one of its
characters:
“[...] Hate Orgoreyn? No, how should I? How does one hate a country,
or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know
towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset
in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what
is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and
ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's
country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it
simply self-love? That's a good thing, but one mustn't make a virtue of
it, or a profession... Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of
Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And
beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope."
