Zefiro Torna
solo exhibition
3 June 2017 - 2 September 2017
Centre d’art Contemporain Passerelle

The exhibition developed through Vasiljeva’s extended stays in the port city of Brest where the atmosphere of docks and maritime architecture gradually entered the installation.

Brest holds a particular resonance within the project partly through Vasiljeva’s longstanding affinity with the writings and life of Jean Genet whose literary landscapes often circle around ports and marginal geographies. The city’s position at the far western edge of France together with its maritime culture and transient populations lends it a slightly mythological tone as if it existed somewhere between a harbour and an ending.

At Centre d’Art Contemporain Passerelle Vasiljeva constructs an abandoned stage environment populated by paraphernalia belonging to a few archaic figures. The raw spirit of the port city together with a faintly Querelle-like sailor aesthetic filters through the installation. The exhibition gathers half domestic half imaginary objects uncertain materials and fragments of theatrical debris.
These elements appear in a series of sculptures assembled from stainless steel spray painted metal textiles rubber ceramics wood and modified found objects forming a layered field of references that opens a dense network of associations.

To accompany the exhibition Vasiljeva invited the educational department of Passerelle to participate in the development of the installation allowing additional gestures and contributions to enter the evolving environment.

photos by Aurélien Mole