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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