Edition II

· Residency ·

Proximity has always been a central concern for humans and society. Often analyzed in a spatial context, its current counterpart, “contemporary proximity,” introduces the idea of a fragmentation of the physical world in favor of more immediate human relationships, consumption, exchanges, and services. This proximity is driving cultural and economic change to the detriment of lasting relationships with the local community.

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For its second edition, the residency nestled on the side of a limestone mountain, near the village of Montbrun-les-Bains. During Fall 2022, the selected artists Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann gleaned the territory from the Tulicasi family home. Simultaneously a space for living, researching, producing, and welcoming the public, this landmark has constituted a platform for encounters. It enabled exploration of an environment inhabited by dissident figures and practices closely linked to this space, set within a natural landscape. Walking, pastoralism, ceramics, geology, herbalist farming, olfactotherapy or even foraging have been the practices within each artistic process.

The distance from urban frenzy has given the artists a more precise, slower, fragmented apprehension of the natural context, bringing out the fragile and intangible of the surrounding landscape.

The dual notion of absence-presence was summoned in the creative process of the two artists, demonstrating that what cannot be seen is not necessarily non-existent or immaterial. Dounia Chemsseddoha uses intervision – a keystone in her work – the result of a process allowing her to form an alliance with the invisible. She strengthened this approach through ceramics, which matured throughout her residency, encountering an artisan ceramist from Montbrun-les-Bains. Hybrid pieces with healing potential emerged, bodily vases and corolla receptacles that could hold tinctures. Meanwhile, Lisa Hoffmann focused her research on the dimension of walking, the traces of humans, animals, and plants, along with their memory. And its clues are evocative of a hidden reality. Writing and photography were used with prowess to elicit a teeming reflection on our relationship with the landscape, and even incisive to dissuade the annihilation of the viewer’s mind. Provoke, deconstruct, and ultimately sensitize.

The exhibition Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux showcased the projects undertaken during the residency, as well as new artworks resulting from the two artists’ immersion in the Drôme Provençale region. This second edition of an• other here warmly supported by the village community of Montbrun-les-Bains and made way for events organized in conjunction with the Art Workers Collective Polynome.

Livia Tarsia in Curia

· Exhibition ·

Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux

For this new exhibition, KOMMET had the pleasure to partner with an• other here nomadic residency program. Dans leurs mains, sous nos yeux is the fragmentary reproduction of the landscape of Montbrun-les-Bains. Through sculpture, installation or photography, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann reveal the results of their research generated on this territory and transcribe the visible and invisible contours of this bucolic environment in the art centre.

Since Antiquity, the village of Montbrun-les-Bains has been known for its sulphurous water. Used for spa treatments, this water relieves rheumatism and treats respiratory ailments. Dounia Chemsseddoha partly explores this facet of the territory by evoking water, a rare and precious resource. At KOMMET, she fictionalises a parallel world and invites the spectators to an exploration of the underground cavern of this village. Receptacles for potentially curative floral waters are scattered throughout this “cave”. Thus, visitors are invited on a journey where it is possible to awaken their senses. The litany of the hills broadcasts reminiscences recorded during the residency. We then discover the ancestral richness of medicinal plants and learn about their virtues, at times esoteric.

Meanwhile Lisa Hoffmann looks, observes and examines to detect a completely different reality, often concealed. She scatters clues throughout the exhibition space, hinting at a journey, a happy encounter with the Montbrun-les-Bains region. After having carried out oral and visual collection work, she imitates certain traces and experiences of what the landscape and the inhabitants, humans, animals, plants and minerals, have been able to tell her. Lisa Hoffmann questions the perception and objective representation of this changing landscape. Ultimately, how to contemplate it while acting on its preservation? At KOMMET, the impalpable nature finds itself enclosed between sheets of glass. Although kept at a distance, it is subject to the analysis of samples under the microscope by visiting scientists. Ghostly hands, accompanied by different optical games, direct the gaze of visitors and stimulate different points of view on the exhibition from the inside, but also from outside the art centre.

Between the two of them, the artists take and select fragments of the Drôme landscape which come to hybridize and contaminate the urban environment. Following the exploration and the intense period of excavation at Montbrun-les-Bains, Dounia Chemsseddoha and Lisa Hoffmann intertwine fabrication and reconstructed memories at KOMMET. The exhibition space becomes the venue for two stories destined to be surveyed and shared.

Émilie d’Ornano