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Prisme

2020.
Mixed technique, variable dimensions

Text written by Alessandro Gallicchio, art historian
ESBAN, associate member UMR 7303 TELEMME AMU-CNRS

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The duo of artists composed of Emma Grosbois & Agathe Rosa has been formed around the questioning of two monumental presences of the Corniche Kennedy of Marseilles: the “Monument to the dead of the Army of the East and distant lands” and the “Memorial of the Repatriates of Algeria”. Indeed, on the first are affixed several plates that deal with the relations between France and Indochina «Three centuries of French presence have sealed by blood shed a solemn pact between France and the peoples of the union of Indochina», or “memory of the military and auxiliaries of all denominations who died for France in North Africa”. Inaugurated on April 24, 1927, the monument designed by Gaston Castel is inspired by the principle of a «portico in the open sky» and develops a massive arch (which can also be found for the entrance to the facade of the Casa d'Italia) flanked by statues of Antonio Sartorio. On a pedestal, in the center of the arch, triumphs a bronze Victory. This monument establishes an evocative dialogue with the landscape by proposing a very dense allegorical and symbolic universe. A crescent and a star, the palms of victory, the dates 1915-16-17-18, the inscriptions «Pour la France», «Pour la paix», «Aux poilus d'Orient», «Aux fils de la plus France», «Orient, Dardanelles, Salonique, Macedonia, Serbia, Monastir, Albanie, Danube», «Morocco, Levant, Syria, Cilicia, Cameroon» and sculptures that show French soldiers pointing the way to the peoples of the East structure a glorified narrative of the victorious people.

Emma Grosbois & Agathe Rosa then teamed up to create a work that establishes a direct confrontation with this monument. From the observation that the space of this sculpture is not innocent or neutral, but political, they try to decipher the underlying messages. This reflection is inspired by the theories of the famous philosopher Henri Lefebvre, who stressed on several occasions that any urban construction corresponds to a social and economic construction, therefore of power. The Prisme installation, designed for the display windows of the exhibition hall corridor, addresses these themes in the treatment of a monument placed on the cornice as on a postcard of the past, on the edge of the city, between the urbanized space and the maritime horizon. The Monument to the Dead of the Eastern Army and of distant lands seems to disappear in this landscape, folded to its scenic device that lies between invention and reality, and breaks the tracks of reading. Monumental and suggestive, the monument opens a poetic window on the Mediterranean and seems to invite us to travel, to dream. But what about his symbols, his allegories and the speeches he should make himself a spokesman? Far from wanting to hide or destroy them, the two artists decide to analyze their elaboration, their conception and their realization, voluntarily placing their investigation in the temporality of the unfinished, before the edification of the memory device. They thus attempt to explore the mechanisms of construction and fabrication of meaning that which are located in the interstice, between the design and the realization of the monument, in this porous space dear to Walter Benjamin, who had not hesitated to use this notion to try to describe a Mediterranean city too often compared to Marseille: Naples.

In Prisme, what counts is not the monument erected and inaugurated, but the architectural model that is clothed with the memory destined for it. Material manufacturing is for Emma Grosbois & Agathe Rosa a downfall of ideological manufacturing. Through visual games that refer to the camera’s darkroom or the effect of frosted glass, a mirror blade, Prussian blue velvet and red gelatin interact with the images of the monument’s construction, kept in the Marseille Municipal Archives. This installation forces the spectator to position himself at an angle to observe, to seek information and to question what is not visible. The quest and the displacement of point of view are henceforth constraints that artists impose on the public to question reality differently. They want to create space for unsolved puzzles, invisible components, other stories, symbols, memories…

Always sensitive to these presences, Emma Grosbois & Agathe Rosa also confront the twenty tons of bronze used in the foundry of Italian immigrants Pellini for the realization of a monumental blade of maritime propulsion, erected in Marseilles in 1971 by the sculptor (also of Italian origin) César in homage to the Blackfoot, a few kilometers from the Monument to the Dead of the Army of the East and distant lands, which was to symbolize a new era for the Mediterranean. In modern times, when distances have been shortened thanks to the technical prowess of which the blade is one of the examples, it would seem almost ridiculous to speak of a border between Marseilles and Algiers. And yet, the colonial history that characterizes the Algerian Repatriation Memorial, commissioned in 1970 by Gaston Deferre, former mayor of the Phocaean city, reminds us of a reality that is always fragmented, conflictual and extremely complex. This monument, designed to commemorate the Blackfoot exodus, was quickly transformed into a place of multidirectional memories, where protest discourse quickly emerged. We will not dwell here on the various reactions triggered by the visual and discursive rhetoric of this sculpture, which conveys a commemorative message in memory of the Blackfoot who landed in Marseilles upstream of the Independence of Algeria, but we limit ourselves to reporting a presence that often goes unnoticed. It is a plaque by the artist Gerard Vié which was placed much later, in 2012, on the side of the pedestal that overlooks the city and which represents the arrival of the boats loaded with Blackfoot and Harkis in Marseille. This commission, made to a former colonel who became an official sculptor of the army, who claims nostalgic comments about the Algerian colonial past, shows all the socio-political actuality of this monument and its multiple interpretations.

Despite the passage of a little more than half a century, the Memorial of Algerian Returnees seems to crystallize tensions related to the relations of domination between France and Algeria. As in the previous case, Emma Grosbois & Agathe Rosa decided to unveil one of the stages in the construction of its structure. From an archive image, made during the manufacture of this immense sculpture, they highlight the structure of the building and ask themselves (us) to what extent the reasons for which this form was created were able (and can) drown today in an infinite spectrum of meanings, memories and claims. The result is an open work, where the «factory of the monument» is analyzed in an enlarged temporality, which precedes and succeeds the simple act of erection.