Galerie Quynh is pleased to present The crossing of disaster, a solo exhibition by François Andes.

The crossing of disaster

How to discern in humanity what is essential when one finds oneself facing a wall on which is engraved the motto Vigilia Pretium Libertatis[1]? How can human society contemplate such landscapes ravaged by their organized genocides while hurtling into the 21st century in the throes of an ecocide of disastrous consequences? Faced with these questions, Andes and Carvalho’s creative process weaves together various beliefs to question the evolution of man's relationship to nature, especially to the ecosystems of watercourses and forests, searching in several mythologies for the keys to reinvent our reality or allowing us, at least, to cross it. The main curatorial axis chooses as protagonist a watercourse traversing different territories and cultures.

Thus, the artist’s and curator’s research exposes analogies and further syncretism that can be found between representations of female and male deities attached to water and the forest in several cultures around the world. A passage between the realm of life and death, from an ancient world to a new world, a territory of infinite exploration, often carrying in itself the origin of life and being able to penetrate the most inhospitable territories, the rivers and forests in the exhibition also bear a reflection on the borders between the wilderness and civilized spaces, a privileged territory of Artemis in Greek mythology, Oxum in Yoruba culture and the Mother Goddesses in Vietnam.

Moreover, it encourages signifying the transformations and disturbances of nature to the predatory behavior of man on earth. The destruction of natural areas, deforestation, atmospheric pollution, water contamination, waste oceans and overexploitation of resources radically upset our land and could become the breeding ground for new mythological figures as well as the appearance of new beliefs.