gallery

Lieux sacrés
[Sacred Places]
1988 - 90

Fascinated by the interaction between nature and culture, the way they oppose and complement each other through the ages, Dominique Laquerre has created a number of pictures and installations related to sacred places. Temples, hypogea, museums, cloisters, among other structures, evoke the passage of time, spirituality and matter coexisting, sought order and constantly renewed chaos. These works consist of simple geometric shapes like pyramids, hourglasses, arcs and cubes. Through contrastingly vivid colors against white, they highlight contrasts between natural elements and architecture.

The first phase of this project was completed in 1989 during an artist residency in the Mexican State of Chiapas. Laquerre integrated plants, dirt, lime and bits of newspaper to her collages on canvas. She used rudimentary techniques for these works.

The Precolumbian pyramids and volcanic mountains of the Sierra Madre share the same outline. The excessive nature of the landscape is matched only by the immoderate pollution and the environmental impact of human activity over the last decades. Native spirituality however reads ecological problems differently: for the native, the mountain is a patient mother, the womb of all life, and the volcano is the mouth with which she occasionally calls to us.

Translated by François Couture