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With the exhibition titled “Pas si éphémère que ça” (Not So Ephemeral After All), photographer Shirine Geagea invites us to explore a strange and dreamlike universe at the Takeover gallery until April 17.
The exhibition is grounded in a unique artistic process inspired by the artist’s traumatic experience during the August 4 explosion, when past, present and future shattered in the absurdity of chaos. Injured by shards of glass, the artist suddenly becomes aware of the fragility of existence, of the critical moment that erases all traces. Driven by a survival instinct, she counters the feelings of annihilation and finitude with a creative impulse, one that embodies permanence.
Through her works, installations and photographs, Shirine Geagea attempts to mitigate the ravages of time and capture the transience of the moment to crystallize its ephemeral beauty. To this end, she employs an original technique, a dual intervention that involves freezing flowers in a block of ice and transforming this medium into a pictorial representation. By photographing the flowers through the transparency of the ice, she captures the subtle poetry born from the interaction between water and plant, immortalizing its grace. Through this poignant fusion, she achieves a multitude of abstract forms and endless color nuances. By enlarging the image, she metamorphoses the view, revealing a cosmic, interstellar or uterine universe.
Thanks to this strange maieutics, where the infinitely large seems to meet the infinitely small, she prompts the viewer to ponder the origins of the world and the mystery of its creation. The photographer thus becomes a magician, a demiurge, challenging the god Chronos himself to halt the march of time and limit its ravages. Through floral hibernation, the artist captures nature in its infinite, frozen splendor. She strives to grasp the slightest vibrations by capturing the tender fragility of rose petals, the softness of their veins, the quivering of their blooms, and the fresh greenery of their leaves. She also allows us to contemplate their lightness and fluidity, to feel their subtle pulsations.
By the very name of the exhibition “Pas si éphémère que ça” (Not So Ephemeral After All), the artist primarily encourages debate and provokes doubt and questioning. Indeed, as fascinating as it is, this work inevitably recalls the chilling spectacle of stuffed birds or butterflies pinned in frames. How can life be maintained in stillness without contradicting the very principle of life? How can it retain its intense flavor without being intensified by the notion of finitude? How can one be moved by the rose without its fragility, its ephemeral beauty that calls us to live the moment intensely?
Faced with the dread of an inevitable end, the artistic work fortunately continues to defy the march of time. It presents itself as a promise of renewal and immortality, that of unopened buds, of a world in the making. When life hangs by a thread, art as a counter-destiny allows, through the creative process, to reconnect with the cycle of the seasons, to reconnect with the energy flow that contributes to the renewal of the world, to join the dance of the universe in its perpetual motion.
Let yourself be drawn into this romantic quest that invites you to savor the delights of an exhibition with a taste of eternity and to whisper, like the poet, “O Time, stop your flight!”
