Exhibition - “Soigner Loire” - Le Voyage à Nantes 2024

Photo: Nuit Du Van, Le Voyage à Nantes 2024 © David Gallard

Alioune Diouf collaborated with artists Olive Martin and Patrick Bernier for “Soigner Loire”, a project presented at the opening night of Le Voyage à Nantes 2024 (La Nuit du VAN) on July 6, 2024.

Since 2023, this project has taken on a number of forms and a number of key events to explore the many facets of the meaning of this incantatory formula through meetings, workshops, exhibitions and performances in partnership with the MAT - centre d'art contemporain du Pays d'Ancenis - the Maison Julien Gracq and Voies Navigables de France, and in dialogue with the Natura 2000 resource centre. Taking place on La Déparleuse, Olive Martin and Patrick Bernier’s floating studio, the inauguration unveiled a sewn and embroidered sailing veil with Alioune Diouf’s signature figure, half human and half bird, representing the corporeal and spritiual alliance.

"Close to this sculpture, La Déparleuse hoists its sail, made between Les Sables d'Olonne, Dakar and Nantes. On a base made by the Tarot sailmakers, Alioune Diouf, Olive Martin and Patrick Bernier have created a figure-vigilante in appliqué fabric, combining scraps of sail and strips woven by Ousmane Ka in Senegal. The half-pirate, half-bird figure, adorned with eyes, ears and feathers, is in dialogue with the sand sculpture. Both are attempts to remedy, to reconcile, to offer, to promise attention and care.

This sail will enable the toue tisserande to navigate the Loire basin with greater respect for its ecosystem, its effigy inflated by the winds bearing high the respect due to the dead, the living and those who come".

- Patrick Bernier

On the docking pier, Diouf imagined “La Mère de Tous” (The Mother of All), an ephemeral, cathartic and votive sand sculpture. The grains of sand that make it up are charged with the intensity of Alioune Diouf's words and the power of the forms born of his hands. The artist invites us to look at the damage inflicted by man on the Loire, and the role played by Atlantic and colonial trade. By catching the sand at sea off the coast of Noirmoutier, and diverting it from its fate as concrete, this sculpture also evokes the limited resources of Loire sand, whose journey to the ocean has been accelerated by the digging of the shipping channel over the last two centuries. It also raises awareness of the fragility of the life forms that live there (migratory birds, dragonflies, spiders, plants, etc.).

On July 24, the sand from the sculpture will be transported by river to Ancenis and Montrelais, where it will be ceremoniously returned to the Loire.