For over twenty years, the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain developed a program that explores key current environmental issues. Over time, his collection has grown to numerous works that invite the public to see the beauty and vulnerability of the living world in a new light. Bringing together over 250 works, mainly from this collection, the exhibition Living Worlds aims to challenge our imagination, questioning the limits of anthropocentrism, to reinvent, with empathy and humility, a new possible coexistence on earth with plants and animals.
In addition, the heart of the exhibition includes a remarkable collection of works by contemporary Amerindian artists, exhibited together for the first time in Europe. Their experience of an equal relationship between living beings, human and non-human, derives from an immemorial tradition, from which we have much to learn in this moment of environmental crisis. Many of these artists come from the Brazilian Amazon, such as Jaider Esbell (Makuxi), Ehuana Yaira and Joseca (Yanomami), Bane, Isaka and Mana (Huni Kuin), but also from the Venezuelan Amazon, such as Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (Yanomami). The exhibition also brings together a selection of drawings by Nivaklé and Guarani artists who live in the Paraguayan forest of the Gran Chaco, such as Esteban and Angelica Klassen, Floriberta Fermin, Marcos Ortiz, Clemente Juliuz, Osvaldo Pitoe and Jorge Carema.
Contrary to Western tradition, Living Worlds encourages us, by watching and listening, to regard non-humans as our equals within a vast shared world that belongs to all living creatures. The exhibition draws on the contributions of a community of artists and scientists engaged in an aesthetic and existential research, deeply marked by the enigmatic beauty of the living world. These include the American musician and bioacoustic Bernie Krause, the Chinese artist Cai Guo Qiang, the French model Fabrice Hyber, the Armenian director Artavazd Pelechian, the French botanist Francis Hallé, the American artist Tony oursler and French directors Claudine Nougaret e Raymond Depardon. Their works are among some of the most emblematic pieces that make up the Fondation Cartier collection and are the fruit of several years of joint work between these artists and the institution. Living Worlds is also an opportunity for the Fondation Cartier to develop new collaborations with artists such as Bruno Novelli and Solange Pessoa from Brazil.
Living Worlds is the continuation of a series of exhibitions already staged at the Fondation Cartier, exploring the place that Western man has appropriated on top of an alleged pyramid of living beings and peoples.
