Forest Embassy

Welcome to the Forest Embassy.

Forest Embassy is a political performance developed in collaboration with the team of Cultivamos Cultura Residency in Portugal and Grace Exhibition Space and Rosekill Residency in the USA. The performance transcends the idea of representing the kingdom of plants, like an embassy of the forest.

As a forest artist, the research drives to become a spokeperson of the plant kingdom. Radicality pass by the embodyment of being an ambassador. The flag represents the plant’s intelligence and it has been made in collaboration with Louise-Anne Demory with a look at the work of the biologist Stefano Mancuso and Francis Hallé. In the center we can see a seed spreading roots down and branches up. Down in the brown, the seed control the soil as a metaphor of the collective network the plants does for food and health issues. Up in the blue sky the seed control de sky as a metaphor of the capacity of the plant to interreact with the climate , to use the wind and flying pollinators to reproduce. On the horizon the seed spread green chlorophyl in the landscape. What if plants could speak ? This flag is an embodiment of the project and will be used for official communications, memorials of land art and or performance. It invites artists to think as a plant or as a wild(wo)man. What if every artist were ambassadors of nature ? and what if forest would be the next temple for our homage to nature ? The forest embassy is a permanent artistic performance where the artist embodies the plant itself by being the spokesperson of the plant’s kingdom. It creates installations, performances and conferences to federate a movement. As a state political meaning the flag represents the political aspect of the art work : giving the forest a sanctuary protected by art. In this art work are presented monumental land-art sculpture made with forest.

The flags brings the question of nationality of an artist, from which country or state an artist is from and who is a forest artist. It is an homage of the writing of Jean Dubuffet about the control of the state’s culture over art. Art has no borders and so has the forest. The forest embassy is here to create a new nationality for global artist and invite them to become artist from the forest rather than artist from a state. This wedding between art and forest is a new concept that could give a new architecture of the Anthropocene. Art and Forest could be the parents of the new monument, a new art and a new territory inviting all artist of the forest of the world to get in. That flags defines the globality of the project where artist of the forest and artist of the city come together to define the new aesthetics. The wild(wo)man is back and It federates all its tribe to form the embassy of the forest guardians.

Since Cadmus killed the Dragon of the forest in the Metamorphosis of Ovid, the forest has no more protector. As the painter is a messenger of nature shall he be the dragon to protect it over kings raping the virginity of nature ?

From 2014 to 2015 , I have been exploring the possibilities of forest art to create a praxis and I was needing collaborations. If art involves long areas of development and a lot of transversality in order to understand a subject and produce a work, the forest involves it all the more. In 2014, I started to say “forest is art” everywhere in my networks ( France Portugal and USA) as a forest-art lobby and I get a first invitation to Condominio Festival in Lisbon in 2015 to propose the art work. At the time I use the community of Lisbon to spread the news of forest-art and to stimulate artist to create sanctuaries for the “dragon.” The performance is about 20 minutes duration and it is open to all public. It is a conference about the historic artistic references about the relationship between culture and forest. Today this performance is taking different forms as it has been produced various times already. Exhibition : Condominio Lisboa. Lisbon. 2015. Feira do Livro. Monchique. 2017. Portugal 2015. The Grace Exhibition Space. NYC. USA. 2018. TTT conference. Mexico. 2018. Festival « As Montras ». Cultivamos Cultura. Sao Luis. Portugal. 2019. TTT conference. Vienna. 2020.

In 2018, I met Alex Romania, and we decided to work together to find the performance of the forest artist. In 2019 Alex made a first trip where we shot a first video of the wild man coming out of the water. Then in 2020 we had to finalize a piece of forest near Kingston and we wanted to do a performance related to this sculpture. Because of the events we made a video while working remotely between Europe and the Usa. In 2021 a residency is planned for the summer to advance the proposal and those collaborations.