Hadaly and Sowana, Cyborgs and Witches
Commissariat : Cécile Babiole
du 12 octobre 2019 au 25 janvier 2020
L’exposition Hadaly et Sowana, Cyborgs et sorcières propose une relecture contemporaine de l’Ève future.
L’Ève future, roman fantastique de l’écrivain français Auguste de Villiers de L’Isle-Adam, publié en 1886, raconte comment, pour aider son ami amoureux d’une cantatrice très belle mais très sotte, l’ingénieur Edison(1) fabrique de toutes pièces un double artificiel, Hadaly, une andréide(2), bien supérieure à la femme réelle. Pour donner une âme à l’andréide, Edison fait appel à Sowana, une voyante dotée d’un fluide surnaturel.
The exhibition Hadaly and Sowana, Cyborgs and Witches reappropriates the theme of technology, conceived as both rational and magical, replacing the novel’s mysogynistic vision with one that is broader and free of stereotypes.
Technology is not only the preserve of mechanistic male geniuses who recreate women (defective women, naturally) according to their fantasies, but also an ensemble of knowledge and practices shared by women (witches, midwives, healers, etc.) and used for the survival and care of the community since time immemorial.
Informed by A Cyborg Manifest(1) by philosopher Donna Haraway, who transcends binarisms and rejects the boundaries between organism and machine, and also inspired by the ecofeminism of Starhawk(2) that regenerates the concept of a living and sacred mother earth, the exhibition brings together artists who question technologies in the broadest sense, and their relationships to the body.
Artists Annie Abrahams, Caroline Delieutraz, Camille Ducellier, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Kaori Kinoshita and Alain Della Negra, Albertine Meunier, Julie Morel, Aniara Rodado, Tabita Rezaire, Christine Tamblyn, Suzanne Treister, Stéphane Degoutin, Agathe Joubert, Lola Perez-Guettier and Gwenola Wagon reinvent the figures of the cyborg or the witch, as symbols of power, resistance, irony and utopia.
1 – A Cyborg Manifesto is a feminist essay by Donna Haraway, published in 1984.
2 – In Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics (1982), Starhawk defines ecofeminism: a movement of ideas and political mobilizations intertwining environmental and feminist issues.
Opening on 12th October 2019 at Espace multimedia Gantner
Hadaly & Sowana, Cyborgs et Sorcières from espace multimedia gantner
