A tall gate, rimmed to resemble a lip, adorned with an eye and tears, blocks the entrance of the exhibition space. On one side: costumes hang from the ceiling, depicting spectral underwater fauna. On the other, for those who can get in: a monumental sculpture—half grimacing face, half open legs from which strange cries escape—and a one-way mirror booth face each other in the middle of a pathway littered with large tokens. From the walls to the works, everything is white. “A white that is almost too white”, in the words of artist Aline Bouvy.
Although the exhibition depicts a theatrical landscape, which seems to invite the audience to play an active role in a disturbing immersive play, the terms of which they do not completely grasp, it is not the stage area that Aline Bouvy is playing with, but the equally codified space of amusement and theme parks.
In France, theme parks sprung up in the 1980s, but they are the successors of traditional funfairs as well as universal and colonial exhibitions (two of which took place in Marseille, in 1906 and 1922), which originated in the nineteenth century. The Panorama exhibition space, inaugurated for the Marseille European Capital of Culture in 2013, is a distant relative: “Its immense bay window functions like a panopticon; the elevated viewpoint over the city conveys a feeling of grandeur and power, like in a control tower in which you become the distanced observer of the world before you.”
The title of the exhibition, The Price of the Ticket, plays on the double meaning of the word price: it refers both to what the public must pay materially to enter an amusement park, to pass through the gates, but also what it costs symbolically, what must be sacrificed. The monochromatic nature of the works also invites a shift in meaning: from white (blancheur) to whiteness (blanchité), implying in both cases an alleged neutrality, a certain ordering of the world—a cruel white fiction.
"Il Circo Oscuro" is an original composition by Aldo Platteau commissioned by Aline Bouvy, performed at the opening.
Choral Professor Jean-Emmanuel Jacquet. With the coryphée choir (Mallory Blin, Brigitte Caron, Kenza Châa, Jeanne Klein, Jaya Micmacher, Maïwenn Piccioli, Lilian Poulain, Julian Rose, Paul Rouault, Hazel Thibaud, Tézya Tschaenn) and the lyric choir (Florence Bansept, Damien Barra, Loïc Basille, Tamara Kakabadze, Julie Louail, Esma Mehdaoui, Salma Omri, Roman Panzer, Manon Pizzichemi, Laura Willot) of the Pierre Barbizet Conservatory – INSEAMM. Recording and Mixing: GMEM – National Center for Musical Creation (Pierre-François Brodin, Tito Loria, Christian Sebille).
Curated by Victorine Grataloup, Marie de Gaulejac and Thomas Conchou
in co-production with La Ferme du Buisson
Photos by Aurélien Mole
