DEPAYSAGES

My first exploration was a trip to  Amazonia in 1995, during which I went up the Tapanahoni River in a canoe and stayed with Native American tribes.

Immersed in the Amazon rainforest, I first felt "edible", as if I had suddenly become a weak link in the food chain, a vulnerable prey, valued by all animal and plant species in the forest. Our goal was to reach an "inselberg" in the middle of the forest, a mountain that Indigenous consider sacred. Slowly navigating  the river between two walls of vegetation with no possible escape  appeared to me like entering a primary nature, hostile and attractive at the same time, a plunge into a wild environment.During this expedition, I realised for the first time that the separation between human beings and nature that had governed our worldview since the 16th century was a very subjective point of view. Indians, on the opposite, seemed to believe that humans were part of nature and that nature itself had a soul.​ Following this trip, it quickly appeared to me that it was essential to experience oneself the environment in order to be able to represent it. It led me to adopt an almost anthropological approach as I started to look for new contexts to study.This belief has turned into a way of life. It took me  to cross Africa for one year, walk in the Himalayas, do deep dives in several oceans, as well as expatriate myself in India for 6 years and now in  Germany.
Each change of scenery allows me to investigate, to feel, compare, collect data, and to reinvent the cognitive mode which will shape them.