Selebe Yoon is pleased to welcome the artist Nicolas Pirus for a research residency from January to February 2024. Supported by the Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the aim of this residency is to produce a film, "Simples Essais", on the role played by French botanical and agronomic missions in the history of the colonization of the kingdoms that would form Senegal. By approaching it from the angle of disciplines generally perceived as inoffensive, this project aims to show that colonization - alongside its most violent history - relied heavily on a whole range of individual initiatives. From Michel Adanson to IFAN's botanical missions, these undertakings were motivated by different perspectives and personal ambitions: dreams of fortune, scientific love, the quest for glory or recognition, pioneering desires, opportunism and cowardice, all of which occupied, if not a greater share, at least a longer period of time.

Through these stories, this research aims to interrogate the herbarium, greenhouses and test gardens as spaces for indexing knowledge and exploitable resources, of colonized territories and peoples. Today, the archiving, publication and misappropriation of this data are updating the need to look back at this history. Selebe Yoon's residency focuses in particular on two moments in this history:

 - the agronomic trials conducted by Baron Roger and the political stakes involved in transforming Senegal into a "colony of exploitation".

- the first "Mission d'étude de la pharmacopée indigène" and the appropriation of indigenous medicinal knowledge by the colonial powers.

Biography

Nicolas Pirus is a French artist born in 1993. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Bourges in 2018 and of the Ensba Lyon post-graduate art program in 2022, he lives and works in Saint-Étienne. His collective multimedia practice interweaves film, 3D animation, writing and installation. His work focuses on forgotten narratives and the impossible forms of a digital ecology. His work has been presented at CIAP Vassivière, CAC le Creux de l'Enfer (Thiers), Frac Lorraine (Metz), CDN la comédie de Caen, la Serre (Saint-Etienne), réfectoir des nonnes (Lyon), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), CLTR-E (Pantin), center d'art la Chapelle saint Jacques (Saint Gaudens), Hasard Ludique (Paris), La_Box (Bourges) and festival B(s)ttf (Paris).

Residency Partner