Elsa Werth — A Land — Michèle didier Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: January 24 → March 7, 2020

Elsa Werth develops a work with multiple forms: installations, videos or sound pieces. Her minimalist works call out for the derisory or trivial aspect, in which the recognition of insignificant acts as a provocation, a testing of space and the context.

From the ordinary, Elsa Werth creates the extraordinary, through an economy of means that diverts objects from their daily use. The artist claims antispectacular gestures as resistance tactics that challenge the conditions of the appearance of a work and the systems of representation in an administered and programmed setting.

The artist once again uses a diversion, this time of the map, questioning the notions of borders and territories, with the main work of the exhibition, A Land, produced by mfcmichèle didier. As the Situationists diversions and psycho-geographic cartographies diverted the official map “to make it say what it hides”¹, Elsa Werth creates a map where unfolds an imaginary, unique and infinite space.

A notion of infinity that reminds us of Gilles Deleuze’s words on the fold. But if the characteristic of the map is to be folded and unfolded, the fold of A Land has the particularity of bringing opposites closer together, reducing distances, and blurring the boundaries it calls for. Unfolded, the map then becomes a dreamed, even utopian space.

A Land is the result of a collage, a list of all common names beginning with the letter A, taken in the alphabetical order of the English dictionary, to which the suffix “land” has been systematically added.

Abackland, Abaftland, Abandonland, Abandonmentland, Abandonmentland, Abaseland, Abasementland, …

Built on the same structure as the names of real countries such as Switzerland, Greenland, Holland, Poland, these terms, although fictional, make sense. They bring together different metaphorical registers that alternately evoke freedom, oppression, absurdity, triviality, abstraction, exoticism. Oscillating between promises and fears, these terms echo current events and question the nature and very meaning of our relationship with the territories.

In the exhibition, A Land is displayed with the 48’32" sound work entitled Anywayland, and Stopper Knot (Nœud d’arrêt), a simple wire stretched in space. Under its apparent simplicity, Stopper Knot confronts the spectator with the complex notion of border and invites her/him to experiment the act of crossing.

¹ Emmanuel Guy, Debord(er) la carte, published 1st May 2012 on Strabic.fr