Category: Événement

The artist Mantra has unveiled a monumental fresco, populated by birds and vegetation, at the heart of the new Nida social-cultural centre in Issy-les-Moulineaux, like an invitation to travel through the seasons from floor to floor. It represents local endangered species in the Issy-les-Moulineaux area, chosen by the artist with the help of the LPO Île-de-France. The fresco will be unveiled on Saturday 15 April afternoon, in the presence of the artist, COAL and the LPO. On the programme: an inaugural speech, guided tours of the fresco, and the screening of the film “Les oiseaux d’Amérique” followed by an on-set discussion with director Jacques Loeuille.

For this fifth Murs d’Audubon fresco in France, the seventh in Europe, the artist Mantra was invited by COAL and Altarea to take over the new Nida third-location centre in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Both an artist and a naturalist, like Jean-Jacques Audubon, who was passionate about entomology and butterflies, Mantra uses very precise lines that play with sharpness and blur.

Against a backdrop of lush vegetation that changes with the seasons, the Nida’s grand staircase is filled with colourful birds. They were chosen by the artist on the basis of a selection of locally threatened species in the Issy-les-Moulineaux area, compiled by the LPO Ile-de-France. The kingfisher, the barn swallow, the goldfinch, the bullfinch, the long-tailed tit and the great spotted woodpecker now accompany visitors as they ascend the hill, like an invitation to travel to the rhythm of life, and to take action to reverse its disappearance.

INAUGURATION ON 15 APRIL 2023

The fresco was unveiled on the afternoon of Saturday 15 April, in the presence of the artist, COAL and the LPO. On the programme: an inaugural speech, guided tours of the fresco, and the screening of the film “Birds of America” followed by an on-set discussion with director Jacques Loeuille.

ON THE PROGRAMME:

From 3pm to 4pm: opening speeches by COAL, Mantra and the LPO (Ligue de Protection des Oiseaux), followed by a round table discussion with these same players.

4pm to 7pm: guided tours of the fresco created by Mantra for the walls of Audubon (3 sessions of 1 hour)

> Registration for the 4pm – 5pm session
> Registration for the 5pm – 6pm session
> Registration for the 6pm – 7pm session

From 5pm to 7pm: screening of the film “Birds of America” followed by a discussion with Jacques Loeuille

NIDA, A NEW SOCIAL-CULTURAL CENTRE FOR ISSY

Nida is a 1,500 m2 social-cultural centre that opened at the end of August 2022, at the heart of the future “Issy Cœur de Ville” eco-district in Issy-les-Moulineaux. Designed by the RAAM Architecture agency, it is operated by Le Shack as a shared space with catering, meeting, reception and reading areas, exhibition and event rooms, and creative workshops for all ages: biodiversity, sewing, DIY and digital creation workshops.

MANTRA IN NEW YORK FOR THE AUDUBON MURAL PROJECT

Alongside this, Mantra was invited to paint a mural in New York, as part of the Audubon mural project and in partnership with the Fungi Foundation. Mantra’s aim with this mural, entitled ‘The journey of the wren’, was to depict a scene in which fauna, flora and fungi are represented in a symbiotic relationship.

MANTRA

Youri Cansell, known as Mantra, is a self-taught artist and naturalist fascinated by entomology, the world of insects. Drawing on childhood memories of his garden in Metz, France, he paints numerous frescoes, most often of butterflies, which he depicts in urban spaces where they are rarely seen in the wild. Sensitive to her surroundings, Mantra works with scientific precision to establish an organic relationship between her subjects and their environments.

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Special screening of “Birds of America” at UGC Les Halles

COAL is partnering the evening screening of Birds of America, a documentary film by Jacques Loeuille, winner of the 2018 COAL Prize. The film retraces the journey of 19th-century naturalist Jean-Jacques Audubon, who set off to paint all the birds of the New Continent.
In the presence of director Jacques Loeuille, winner of the 2018 COAL Prize, producer Ariane Métais, Philippe de Grissac, Vice-President of LPO France and Lauranne Germond and Joan Pronnier from COAL.

Book your tickets now at the cinema box office! Click here.

The film tells a political counter-history of the United States through the disappearing birds of the work of the French naturalist painter and father of American ecology, Jean-Jacques Audubon.

Synopsis: At the beginning of the 19th century, a French painter, Jean-Jacques Audubon, travelled around Louisiana to paint all the birds of the New Continent. The discovery of the great wilderness encourages the utopia of a young nation projecting itself into a world of unprecedented beauty. Since then, the American dream has been shattered, and Audubon’s work forms an archive of the skies before the industrial age. On the banks of the Mississippi, Birds of America retraces the steps of these birds, now extinct, and reveals another story of the national myth.

Produced by Météores Films and ARTE Cinéma, the feature film project received the Louis Lumière prize from the Institut Français, as well as support from the Centra National des Arts Plastiques (Image / Mouvement fund) and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is distributed by KMBO. Jacques Loeuille was the winner of the 2018 COAL Prize.

“I discovered Audubon when I was studying at the Fine Arts School in Nantes, the city where he grew up and drew his first birds on the banks of the Loire, before setting sail for the United States to escape the Napoleonic wars. While his work has long been a scientific reference, it is now a purely aesthetic object, as well as a documentary treasure trove, since many of the painted creatures have disappeared.” – Jacques Loeuille

“What is particularly poignant, in this age of fake news and the manipulation of scientific information, is that extinct birds are also the subject of a whole range of images and falsified or imaginary accounts: false testimonies, confusion of species, but also photo-montages and optical tricks. This aesthetic of the ‘fake’, through the faked or erroneous images of the ‘bird watcher’, will be present in the installation, in dialogue with Audubon’s paintings. In fact, the extreme precision and ‘high definition’ of Audubon’s images is an astonishing contrast to today’s images of birds, which are so poor and low definition by comparison. Should we see this as a vanity of technique and technology?” – Jacques Loeuille

“To compensate for these disappearances, oil companies invested in a mega-zoo and aquarium when the city of New Orleans was rebuilt after Katrina: Audubon Zoo and Audubon Aquarium of America.

The figure of Audubon has now become a precious symbol for anyone wishing to ‘green’ their own image at a lower cost. Audubon zoo recreates the “natural settings” of the “Birds of America” plates, where we can observe – among other things – a turtle-dove leaping from one plastic branch to another; the bird lives this existence in a very shallow glass cage whose surface corresponds to Audubon’s drawing sheet: a double elephant folio, or 98 by 76 centimetres! Further on, in the Audubon Aquarium of America, you can see a strange sight: sharks swim between the underwater frames of fake oil rigs. BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil are all patrons of the centre, which is dedicated to children’s education.” – Jacques Loeuille

“New York City has decided to take artistic action to raise awareness of the current ravages of Washington’s environmental policy by commissioning artist Nicolas Holiber to create a series of sculptures inspired by endangered Audubon birds. I met him in the large studio he occupies in Brooklyn, where he sculpts these birds by assembling pieces of wood. In April 2019, twelve sculptures representing endangered birds will be installed along Broadway, from the heart of the city, in front of Lincoln Center at 67th Street, to the Audubon Parc Historic District in Washington Heights at 168th Street. They will remain there until winter 2020. The untreated nature of the recovered wood will put the sculptures to a severe test; the process of degradation by the climate is an integral part of the work.” – Jacques Loeuille