Ali Baba's Cave
The very day I arrived in Jin Ze, I was told about the Dutch neighbor. The artists who had preceded me at the residency had the opportunity to visit him.
Just looking at the pictures of the previous visits made me want to go there right away. I couldn't wait to see all of this neighbor's vintage pieces in person.
A week later, we were finally invited to visit him and it exceeded my expectations. Venturing into those packed warehouses made me loose my temporal and spatial bearings.
They were overflowing with 19th-century antiques, mostly from French castles and churches. It's a small world! How could I have imagined that in a remote village in China I would discover furniture, paintings and sculptures from my country?
After walking through two large warehouses of European antiques, our neighbor invited us to have coffee and mooncakes in another building decorated and furnished with Chinese antiques. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Here stood sandalwood furniture, ivory sculptures and vases, furniture created especially for Chinese emperors. I was amazed. He also showed us old pottery that was more than 2,000 years old and had been found in tombs. These pottery pieces are the oldest pieces he has. The ancient Chinese, like the pharaohs in Egypt, buried their loved ones with many objects in case they needed them in their next life.
On this first visit, I was unable to take any photos. I was overwhelmed by the overflow of what surrounded me. I asked to come back alone the next day to take photos at my own pace.
The next day, I was back in Ali Baba's cave. Despite the large number of photos I took, none of them made me feel emotional. Was it this feeling of chaos of so many stories in the same space? I don't know, but inspiration did not come. I could not find my own narrative among all these objects.
I returned to the place about ten days later. Benjamin Buhl, one of my co-residents, was working on a large art installation in one of his warehouses and I visited him regularly to see the progress of his work.
And one day, during one of these visits, inspiration knocked on my door unexpectedly.
After taking pictures of Benjamin’s installation, I went to one of the warehouses where our neighbor had set up a mini photo studio. I started playing and inventing improbable associations of objects that I found around me. I felt like a little girl discovering treasures. Here a sculpture of Don Quixote, there an old accordion, a hunting horn, Chinese vases. It was incredibly inspiring!
One after another, I created sculptures as if I were writing little stories. I collected memories of different origins and styles. I provoked encounters that perhaps should never have happened in real life. I gave a second life to objects that were perhaps once used as outward signs of wealth and that had undergone a long descent into oblivion.
