Artists: Sara Bichão and Violaine Lochu
Exhibition title: Twin Islands
Curated by: Marcel Dinahet, Ann Stouvenel, Jesse James and Sofia Carolina Botelho
In collaboration with: Loïc Le Gall (Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest) and Fernando Bela (Carpintarias of São Làzaro, Lisbon)
Venue: Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain, Brest, France
Date: June 17 – September 17, 2022
Photography: Aurélien Mole / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain
The two artists offer their ‘Twin Islands’ project, in which the notions of parity, reciprocity and exchange interplay. The project first took the form of two simultaneous creative residencies, taking place over one month, during which Sara Bichão and Violaine Lochu exchanged their homelands: Sara Bichão stayed on Ouessant Island, off the western tip of France, while Violaine Lochu went to São Miguel Island in the Azores, to the west of Portugal.
During this experience, which linked fiction and everyday life, they each worked on a ‘reflection’ of the other. Each on her island, they sought to invent methods of long-distance communication, playing on the notion of insularity. From east to west and north to south, their movements on the island to go out, find their way around, work, and communicate were done following a precise protocol and according to the island’s geography, through the interior (centre), the periphery (coasts), and the exterior (ocean). By way of these rituals, each mirrored the daily movements of the other, in island space and time, translating the experience as closely as possible.
In the course of these two parallel residencies, which took place in February – March 2022, visual, sound and performative objects for ‘communicating’ were produced. The first time these objects are shown and activated publicly will be their appearance at the Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain in Brest. These activations will be filmed for a video-performance to be shown at Carpintarias in São Lázaro – Centro Cultural in Lisbon, from 1 st sept. 2022. During a second phase of exhibitions and performances, the artists will experiment with different ways of presenting the work produced in the Azores and in Ouessant.
