Affective and corporeal memory, individual, collective, and intergenerational trauma, intimate and familial relationships, violence, loss, hope, resilience, and rituals are all themes that traverse Eve Tagny\u2019s hybrid polymorphic work \u2014 work in which vegetation, more than a simple motif, has an imposing presence. Tagny\u2019s personal and artistic trajectory reached a critical juncture when a loved one committed suicide in a luxuriant garden in Johannesburg, South Africa. The contrast between the verdant beauty of the garden and the horror of the act became imprinted in the artist\u2019s memories as a salient image for the tragedy. From the need to respond to this harrowing event was born Lost Love<\/em>, an intimate book of photographs and poetic reflections, through which she endeavours to manifest the unspeakable, to evoke the indescribable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Omnipresent in the images, in those taken before<\/em> as much as after<\/em> the death of Tagny\u2019s loved one, the plants seem to be a binding element of the narrative. Beyond a simple metaphor for the cycle of life, they appear, for the artist, to represent another mode of existence. While traumatic events necessarily engender a cognitive and temporal rupture with the real, the silence and slowness of the plant kingdom offer an environment and pace conducive to renewal and meditation. The recent exhibitions Lost Love \u2014 Saisons futures<\/em>, Sanctuaries<\/em>, and Condolere Sanctuaries<\/em>, comprising various installations that appose organic materials (soil, rocks, wilted flowers), photographs, videos, architectural structures, and plastic sheeting, also suggest material interconnections, often invisible, that connect us to, or sometimes separate us from, the \u201cflesh of the world.\u201d In this vein, Tagny\u2019s acute sensibility concerning thresholds and the interweaving of micro and macro phenomena, conscious and subconscious, corporeal and transcendent, call for introspection about our position or role, both individual and collective, in the organization of the living world and in our relationships with others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from the French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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