Camille Henrot, Les Argonautes du pacifique, “Argonauts of the Western Pacific”, Bronislaw Malinowski (series “Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers?”), 2012. Copyright ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris
Camille Henrot lives between Paris and New York; her practice similarly seems to navigate the world, and contemplate its contents. Her subject matter ranges from anything to everything, and the more variety, the less commensurability. Particularly in her films, there is a randomness and vitality in what Henrot brings to the fore, but with each introduction, definition moves further beyond reach. Her quest for knowledge encounters an anthropological messiness: she comes not to a dead-end, but to an infinity of open ends. Henrot’s most prominent work recently, “Grosse Fatigue”, 2013, which won her the Silver Lion at last year’s Venice Biennale, was made while on a fellowship at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, the largest scientific museum complex in the world. “Grosse Fatigue” attempts to catalogue the mass of information from the establishment’s archive, all from the artist’s mac laptop. We begin with her galaxy desktop and footage pops up rhythmically in new windows, reminding us of that other, infinite realm of digital space. Henrot’s work in general investigates cultural idiosyncrasies, which spawn cross-cultural reinterpretations and help to create her visual regurgitation of everything that has been. It is her intuitive and effortlessly engaging compositions, which make her work so vivid and memorable. Indeed, the possibilities are endless.
“Snake Grass” (Henrot’s first institutional solo in Germany) at the Schinkel Pavillon is an exhibition in two halves. Downstairs, through a neon-red passage, the 2011 film “The Strife of Love in a Dream” is projected into the darkness. A key aspect of Henrot’s film is not only her quick, cumulative layering of footage, but also the brilliant, tension-building sound from the electronic music producer, Joakim Bouaziz. The climactic relationship between drum crescendo and rampant visuals is hypnotic. The snake is here, and it’s climbing over an ancient sculpture or an Indian landscape, or it’s hissing from a blue bucket. This chop-and-change of vivid snapshots has become distinctive of Henrot’s style. The film opens with the quote “India is the unconscious of the West”, and scenes of worship and pilgrimage are spliced with pill-factories producing 25 mg Atarax, a sedative antihistamine used to treat anxiety in adults, (perhaps induced by snakes?).
Upstairs, the octagonal pavilion is filled with flower sculptures: a continuation of the 2011 series “Is it Possible to Be a Revolutionary and Like Flowers?” Here the artist appropriates the ancient Japanese tradition of ikebana flower arranging, to express words without language. Beside each structural and exotic arrangement is the quote that formed it, and the Latin derivatives of the flowers that form part of it. This method of communication is a botanical code, which speaks visually rather than textually. It seems appropriate that constructed language, in all its variation, should be translated into something universal and natural, but are flowers up to the task? Henrot’s ikebana is an art form interpreted by a non-native, and the errors or inaccuracies are part of a greater challenge to understand cross-cultural systems of thought. So the discipline is used as a platform to guide communication but not restrict it. The flowers prove delicate and exotic, but meaning and clarity are sucked further into a black hole, which Henrot continues to dart around. Sure, the work is seductive, but it’s in equal parts frustrating: meaning is out of reach, and the impossibility of knowing everything is ever-present.
Camille Henrot, L’Homme sans honneur, “Argonauts of the Western Pacific”, Bronislaw Malinowski (series “Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers?”), 2012. Copyright ADAGP Camille Henrot. Courtesy the artist and kamel mennour, Paris.
Review by Lilly Daniell
Camille Henrot, Snake Grass
April 5–May 11, 2014
The artist’s upcoming show “Camille Henrot: The Restless Earth” will open at the New Museum, New York in May. Her solo exhibition “The Pale Fox” at the Chisenhale Gallery, London closes this week. Henrot has been nominated for the 2014 Hugo Boss Prize.