en résonance avec la Biennale de Lyon – NUIT RESONANCE

The two Australian artists Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro develop sculptural work through a variety of media. In exploring the materials of our contemporary world, they raise socio-political issues such as globalization, mediated culture, consumption and the property.

Prem is a colloquialism used to claim the right of possession over an object. The idea that we can have something just by being the first to name it still works geographically, with the claim land rights, but also biologically with copyright and other human genetic discoveries.

For their first solo exhibition in France, the artists reproduce with Lego bricks the terrain of a region of China known as China’s “Area 51”. Discovered in 2006 thanks to satellite images of Google Earth, this area appears to be an exact replica, scale 500:1, of 157 500 km2 within the Chinese province of Aksai Chin, a border region adjoining India and China. The reasons for the creation of the original model of Aksai Chin remain a mystery : The area is important for China because it connects Tibet with a road that the Chinese built in 1962. Experts say that this model could have been built for military purpose

By making a replica of an existing model, and making it portable, Claire Healy & Sean Cordeiro continue consideration of this fascinating mystery.