ENG

Adèle Guilbault - POSSEIDA PLATUNTILDA

An imaginary foundation of species rescued from scientific laboratories. Visitors encounter a pseudo-scientific discovery, a human who has become a marine species. The fiction begins with a real scientific theory and then emancipates from it in an immersive dreamlike installation. Theories can be validated at one time, invalidated at another and rehabilitated afterwards. This installation plays with scientific codes by blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, and between irrefutable and false information. This project explores the theory of chordates, the largest group of animals on Earth, including humans. This theory is studied at the embryonic stage, all the species in this group share a common anatomical feature known as the notochord. It becomes the nervous system and the brain for the humans.

Adèle Guilbault works on these microscopic representations on an inordinate scale. At this moment that her aesthetic universe takes on its full meaning. Transcending two-dimensional scientific schemes through aesthetic choices of medium, material and colour. To give them back depth and imperfections by working with volume and detail, in order to bring organics to these representations smoothed out by an objective point of view. The embryonic diagrams were found in the library of the University of Geneva.

The reseach about fiction take place at the archives of the Zoological Museum of Lausanne to consult their iconography. Adèle Guilbault already based a written work on cryptozoology. Cryptozoology is a pseudo-science concerned with fantastic creatures (Mermaids, Bigfoot, Lockness Monster).