Marie Meulien
Guest photographer for the Photographic Nights of Selma 2021
Poet, fine art photographer and creator of artist’s books, Marie Meulien works in the South of France, in the Drôme Provençale, where she lives, as well as during her stays in Asia: Japan, India and the Indian Ocean… She has been working on a primary tropical forest project since 2018. Whether rendering a poetic movement or blowing the whistle on the barbarity of men, her stance adheres to a revitalized and humanist vision of the world. At the heart of her work beat the prodigious capacity of vegetal regeneration and poetry – a force to withstand our conditionings and accept our finitude.
Since 2013, Marie Meulien has exhibited in galleries and festivals such as Les nuits photographiques de Pierrevert, and more particularly places related to poetry, respect for human rights and the protection of life. She participates too in the Page(s international contemporary artists book fair. Several of his works have joined public or private collections, including her artist’book Fubuki, shortlisted in 2019 for the Jean Lurçat Prize (poetic song by Marie Meulien eye gazing Bernard Coste’s photographs, which he took in the far north of Hokkaido, Japan).
She is a founding member of the Présence(s) photographie festival (France).
2021/2023 (ongoing or deferred): alliance française Victoria, Seychelles; in France : biennale d’art contemporain Mâcon; Hélio-galerie Nadar Tourcoing; librairie galerie Écriture Chabeuil; librairie galerie Chant libre et médiathèque Montélimar; Page(s 2021, Paris…
AMONG HER WORKS:
Les songes verts du Black Parrot (The Black Parrot’s Green Dreams)
Ode to the plant kingdom and plea for peace.
Poetic song and photographs: Marie Meulien
Prolonging Le sec et la sève (The Dry And The Sap), where the cosmic ecstasy before the mighty beauty of the primary tropical forest is expressed through highly contrasting black and white abstractions, The Black Parrot’s Green Dreams this time explore its colours, in several registers; ever in the author’s poetic intensity, not excluding, for this series, a discreet touch of fantasy.
EXHIBITION, SLIDE SHOW, ARTIST’S BOOK.
Le sec et la sève (The Dry And The Sap)
The cosmic ecstasy before the mighty beauty of the primary tropical forest.
Poetic song and photographs: Marie Meulien
This trilogy includes:
Le temps calligraphe, La forêt me regarde, Dans les plis du sec.
(The Calligrapher Time, The Forest Is Watching Me, In The folds Of The Dry).
The author celebrates her complicity with the forest and bears witness to those moments of grace when it offers her images… Addressing the child who dwells within us, infinitely living with its insatiable hunger for harmony, this work suggests that man can be reconciled with its primary gaze. The blacks of this abstract series border on the calligraphic gesture. EXHIBITION, SLIDE SHOW, BOX SET OF 3 ARTIST’S BOOKS.
Presbyterian Church
Outrage at human barbarism and praise of trees
POEM AND PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN IN THE ANDAMAN ISLANDS: MARIE MEULIEN
In the 19th century, the Andaman Islands, Southern India, were under British rule. Opposite the capital city, Port Blair, the tiny Ross Island used to watch over the biggest penal colony in the world: Cellular Jail. While torture was being practiced in Port Blair, life was delightful on Ross Island where the colony officials had their quarters.
Set in the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean, Ross Island was then at the apex of western world comfort and refinement: Bohemian crystal, Murano glass, tennis courts, fresh water baths… It didn’t lack any luxury, not even that of a Presbyterian Church and its adjoining churchyard to whiten both souls and bones…
Destroyed by an earthquake in 1941 and then by the Japanese invasion, Ross Island was fed to the hungry tropical forest after India became independant.
This series of photos, as well as the accompanying poem, was made in memory of Cellular Jail prisoners and all political prisoners, yesterday’s and today’s too, wherever their jail may be.
EXHIBITION, SLIDE SHOW, ARTIST’S BOOK. THIS WORK WAS ALSO PRESENTED IN A BOOK PUBLISHED BY IKI EDITIONS (2018).
POEM (FRENCH, HINDI, ENGLISH) :
In those days, on Ross Island, nothing was too beautiful:
Bohemian crystal, mahogany, ebony, Murano glass,
Ballrooms, tennis courts, gardens and fresh water
Baths.
Nothing was too good: sweet breads and buns, petits-fours,
Golden buttered toast… in the delicate, insatiable gulping
Of the officers of His Majesty’s Empire. Glutted
Gullets.
Nothing was lacking. Not even,
For whitening souls and bones,
A Presbyterian Chapel
And its adjoining churchyard.
Not even,
On the island opposite, three wingspans away: Cellular Jail,
Where, in solitary confinement, Indian Resistance fighters were dying.
Deprived of their hunger strike, even,
Intubated. Gullets
Glutted with force-fed milk.
While we are at it, the ladder said:
Why shouldn’t we ascend to nowhere?
Let’s, answered the staircase.
No more was needed for the ficus rimphii
To feel, rising, from deep in their sap, an imperious
Greed.
