Mélanie Pavy, presents in the exhibition REFUGE-OMEGA her project FUKUSHIMA REPRISES, realized during her residency at the Cité internationale des arts. With her residency and project partner, anthropologist Sophie Houdartavec, she will offer a reading of FUKUSHIMA REPRISES, on September 11 at 5pm.
At the origin, there is the discovery of a real project: the future construction of a Japanese city in southern India.
And a hypothesis, read in the Japanese press: this city could be a refuge for the Japanese elite in case of a new nuclear disaster.
We are a few months after the triple disaster of March 2011, a few months after the day when "Japan almost disappeared" [quote M.Kan Naoto] and the city that is about to emerge from the arid steppe of Tamil Nadu is providentially named Omega, which means "the last".
This is all it takes for it to evoke, between the New World and Noah's Ark, the great stories of the foundation and decline of our civilisations.
– Mélanie Pavy
Between India and Japan, fabulations and nostalgia, the exhibition REFUGE-OMEGA attempts to give substance to the mirage city of Omega. At the same time, Mélanie Pavy questions the radioactive contamination of our territories, as one of the most convincing, albeit invisible, signs of a fundamental disturbance in the relationship that humans have with their world.
Mélanie Pavy (France) and Sophie Houdart (France) are recipients of the "Art Explora - Cité internationale des arts" residency program.