The dream of water

Water resources management is a fundamental issue in the context of sustainable development. The United Nations 2030 Agenda includes various areas of action: access to water, protection of natural capital, promotion of responsible behaviour. Sacrosanct objectives towards which I feel a certain bewilderment when I think of the difficulties that all our attempts at sustainability encounter when at the base there are still enormous economic, hygienic-health disparities and essentially many lack basic rights.

A didactic or scientific work would therefore not have been up my alley. I therefore wanted to rely on a dreamlike vision, creating an aquatic environment (simultaneously marine, lake and river) that crossed the two walls of the building to make it unified through an anamorphic work (deformed on both facades).

This space with a suspended atmosphere is inhabited by two figures, an elderly man with a coral crown and a curly-haired little girl, leaning on each other. They are metaphors. The bearded old man with thick hair seems like a proven Poseidon, now far from the strength of the Hellenic divinity. He has lost his frowning face, his powerful physique, his impetuous gaze, his chariot, his trident. He seems painful, worried, clasps his hands (prays or welcomes, equally hesitant). Next to him the little girl is holding an octopus in her arms, protecting it. She looks up into the light as a turtle passes right over her head. A seahorse, a perch, a jellyfish appear.

But something doesn't add up. The old man has floating hair, he is actually part of the backdrop, he sings of his desolation while looking into our eyes. Not the little girl, she is as if stuck to him but her curls are not moved by the water, her dress is still, her gaze wanders far away towards the light. She is in an impossible condition, firm but not static, in an attitude of attention and curiosity. It wants to be a tribute to those who take care of all this, with the stubbornness of childhood (when nothing is impossible, on the contrary).