Fonn kèr si la mèr Performance

What strikes you here, on Reunion Island, are its natural landscapes: volcanoes, mountains, circuses, rivers, ravines, coasts that are intensely and constantly eroding. And if you listen, you can hear the voices of men, women and children speaking French, Malagasy, Swahili, Chinese, Urdu and creole. As a bridge, the Creole language creates the link between these peoples who want live together from the depths of the history of colonisation and slavery. Yasmine Attoumane with ‘Fonn kèr si la mèr* (deep in my heart and soul about the sea) offers for you to listen to sound extracts of Malagasy and Reunion lullabies of the project Inaudible bottles as well as a poetic reading on the concept of ‘mooring’ inspired by the work of Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou. *FONN KÈR is another form of poetry, which means ‘what i have deep in my heart and soul’, and the word SI LA MÈR is polysemic: about the mother or on the sea,

Yasmine Attoumane is a visual artist who was born in Reunion Island. Drawing inspiration from the Rivière des Galets, on the banks of which she lives, Attoumane carries out in situ experiments along shorelines and riverbeds, delineating the unstable and fluctuating natural sites by markings or transitory installations. She touches upon its borders, our interaction with and a sense of belonging towards these precarious territories. The question of belonging to a territory, inhabit, the border, the positioning and the encounter with these precarious territories have become artistic, political and social questions. In the White Pebble Yasmine takes over a space of 1m2 situated in a riverbed by fitting a custom made ceramic surface on a rock and the sandy soil, as a metaphor of institutional management of landscape. Parallel to this, she is developing Aufil de l'eau (Along the water), a project around rivers and cities such as Betiboka, Mahajunga – La Seine, Paris – Maas, Maastricht, which can take different forms to reflect her relationship and practice, ranging from action-performances, installations to photographic work or objects. Attoumane has been selected as the first participant in the residency programme jointly set up by the Jan van Eyck Academie and the Institut Français des Pays-Bas.