Monique
'Few Invisible Cities and The Quest'
Monique Patenaude on her visual
art exhibition in Pitanga in March '02:
Since my
childhood in Quebec, Canada, I have been fascinated by representations
of our planet. Globes and maps and aerial photographs delight me. My
first trip by plane is one of my fondest memories. The patchwork of
the European land, the bright jewellery of the Greek islands, the elegant
calligraphy of the Canadian landscape under the snow, the transparent
turquoise of the Caribbean sea have given me profound esthetical emotions,
as intense as the masterpieces of the greatest museums. Therefore, it
is not a surprise that I use representations of the Earth as a basic
material for my works of art.
Four invisible cities
From 1991 to 1996, I used maps
of different existing cities of the world to give a body to what I called
'The Invisible Cities' in homage to Italo Calvino, an Italian post-modern
writer who wrote a book of this title. In the book, Calvino describes
more than 50 times the City of Venice which seems to be each time an
'other' city..
The invisible cities surround, mirror or haunt the material ones. We
can perceive or feel or dream them but we cannot touch them physically.
Some are obscure and dreadful; others are light and joyful and carry
the beauty of tomorrow.
I present here four of the joyful ones.
The Quest
After a long series of 'Invisible
cities', I left aside my collection of maps and plans and my researches
on 'the expression of the human species through its cities'. I came
back to the individual human being and its thirst for light and consciousness
in a body, on the Earth. The exhibition presented here is in that line,
but it does go a little further: it is a synthesis of the two preceding
steps.
Maps represent the world, human
bodies represent the individual being, mantras represent the aspiration,
and colours (white, silver, ochre and gold) represent the Consciousness.
These four
elements are associated to express 'The Quest' for the Consciousness.
The Quest which is the sense of all life.
Monique Patenaude
patenaude@auroville.org.in
The greater part of Monique's
works displayed during the above mentioned exhibition was sold; proceeds
have gone towards purchasing land for Auroville.
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