"I Will Return" Collection Exhibition

Kim Soo Ja, Korean artist. International Migrant Objects installation, 2007.

Preface: In 2005, the Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne was established in the southern suburbs of Paris, becoming the second-largest contemporary art museum in Paris and a key hub for contemporary art in the region. It holds an extensive and comprehensive collection of French contemporary art, alongside regular thematic exhibitions. The museum focuses on local French contemporary art, playing an indispensable role in promoting contemporary art and humanistic education in this working-class suburb. Under the left-wing municipal government's promotion of contemporary arts education over the past three years, it has achieved significant results, advancing the popularization and democratization of contemporary art. The museum has become an integral part of Paris's contemporary art scene.

Concept of the "I Will Return" Special Collection Exhibition: In recent years, many contemporary museums have innovated their presentation of rich collections, moving beyond chronological, stylistic, or typological displays. More effective curatorial approaches based on themes or issues allow for a re-examination of works, revealing unique systems and core insights that elucidate diverse relationships and offer contemporary social interpretations.

The theme "I Will Return" is literary, suggesting leaving home, traveling, carrying, imagining, dreaming, seeking, creating, realizing, and the joy and hope of returning. Leaving home can be forced by natural disasters or human tragedies, leading to tragic exile or self-imposed displacement due to external threats. With no choice but to accept fate, refugees hope to one day return to their warm homeland to reclaim their roots and existence. Alternatively, leaving home may be a voluntary choice for work or travel, driven by ideals and plans to explore the unknown and realize dreams, bringing back various hopes. Whether voluntary or forced, leaving home means stepping into a new world, accepting extraordinary challenges, and expanding horizons through unique experiences.

"I Will Return" is the third special collection exhibition at the Musée d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, featuring works from its archives and new acquisitions. Many new works are debuting, primarily by young French artists, including foreign residents such as Indian artist Shilpa Gupta and Korean artist Kim Soo-ja (both resident artists in autumn 2007). The exhibition is built upon the current globalized social context, addressing passive displacement due to disasters or political, economic, and environmental crises, as well as active movement for travel and work. These personal or collective events, whether under coercive violence or poetic forms, constitute a continuous journey of life.

The exhibition moves from "action" to the "present state of existence," surrounding the historical relationships between individual and collective construction. Personal incidents may involve not traveling or understanding others, accepting life as an internal journey constructed on personal and virtual realities. This exhibition questions displacement and travel through their different forms and motivations, exploring what they nurture and what people pursue. Exile depicts a powerful imagination, forcing confrontation with alternative possibilities and realities of other times and spaces, involving the history people construct—whether tragic or mundane daily life—linking visions of the past, present, and future.

Overview of Artists' Concepts: The "I Will Return" exhibition revolves around the diverse and interdisciplinary artistic explorations of France's new generation: painting, sculpture, objects, images, sound, and video. Many works are formed through spatial or environmental installations, each presenting a shift or return of individual or collective consciousness. Each work is a dramatic, adventurous, or tragic journey scenario, constructing paths of life and existence between reality and imagination, virtuality and science fiction, time and space, and the individual and the collective.

Several veteran figures in the French art scene are included, having either self-exiled or moved to Paris for art. Sarkis (born 1938), an Armenian born in Turkey, self-exiled to Paris in 1964. His work is based on personal and collective historical memory, known for object installations. Here, he presents Kriegsschatz (War Treasure), a WWII-era object-sculpture installation, stating, "My memory is my country," navigating between personal and historical memory. Peter Klasen (born 1935), a German artist living in France, is a master of European narrative realism, depicting modern urban daily life and critiquing urban traffic signs through painterly symbolic language, metaphorizing the tension of modern urban life. Vladimir Velickovic (born 1935), from former Yugoslavia (now Serbia), witnessed the tragic torture and war of WWII. His art is built on extreme violence, materiality, and physicality, depicting refuge, torture, and death. Also featured are French New Realist Daniel Spoerri (born 1930) and another narrative realist Herve Telemaque (born 1937).

Notable mid-career artists include Jean-Luc Moulene (born 1955), who transforms the utopian function of mass media images into imagined, realistic, and standardized social forms, revealing an extraordinary poetry. Pierre Ardouvin (born 1955) often constructs surprising object installations with playful humor and sentimentality, provoking a twisted world between nature and culture, harmony and chaos, dreams and nightmares, criticism and clichés, displaying abnormal contemporary human phenomena. Nathalie Talec (born 1960) explores cold, desolate landscapes, developing her imaginative space. She virtually plays the role of an Arctic adventurer, intending to explore this extreme and mysterious world, saying, "I think there are similarities between polar explorers and artists. They both explore unknown fields, accept the challenge of reality, discover according to different situations, and attempt to develop the mysterious unknown. Both hope to find a result, a form, through an action, a movement, an object, and a report."

Alain Bublex (born 1961), formerly a Renault car designer, develops alternative video and audio art. Through comprehensive media—architecture, design, video, sketch, and photography—he imagines the world as an endless architectural project, cautiously observing world changes under a utopian visual. Claude Closky (born 1963) appropriates and converts symbols from daily consumer life and mass media through concise methods of gathering, collecting, and decontextualizing, transforming them into all types—design, collage, photo, video, audio, and books. Based on language, image, and symbol display, this intellectual exploration is also constructed on personal and social collective identity awareness. Valerie Jouve (born 1969) presents figures in modern urban or insignificant environments with extreme attitudes and behaviors. Although appearing natural, almost all figures face away from the audience, highlighting modern people's hesitation when facing urban environments between reality and imagination, and figuration and abstraction.

Melik Ohanian (born 1969), of French-Armenian descent, carries tragic ethnic memories (the brutal genocide of Armenians by Turks in the early 20th century). His creation revolves around ethnicity, exile, and roots, developing the concept of foreigners in territory and space. Through multiple media, especially video, without narrative, exoticism, or names, he invites viewers to face reality without preconceptions. Cecile Paris (born 1970), a young video artist, presents minimalist videos through minimalist actions. Notably, her works contain no language, accompanied by beautiful light music melodies, with a figure performing minimal actions, akin to 1960s Minimalist artists believing "less is more."

Barthelemy Toguo (born 1967), from Gabon, Africa, is a true artistic nomad, wandering through major European art cities. His work is built on displacement, colonization, exile, refuge, and identity, expressed through multiple forms and media: sculpture, painting, video, installation, etc., showcasing his personal experiences, interpreting his predicament, and embarking on new fields, questioning himself and us: "Where do we come from?" As the artist says, "It doesn't matter if you are white, black, or yellow. Regardless, everyone could be exiled." Tatiana Trouve (born 1968) builds her art on criticizing current bureaucratic systems and capitalism. Between 1997 and 2007, she created a series of office building models, like unfinished preservation projects, continuously changing components to form various spaces. These small model constructions, unnatural spaces, and location models are termed "reclaimed land." Gwen Rouvillois (born 1970) creates low-quality architectural landscapes through painting, digital images, and other media, based on dual critiques of painting and consumer society. These polysemous works leave ample room for viewer imagination, intending for viewers to project themselves into the landscape.

Resident artists include Elina Brotherus (born 1972), a Finnish artist focusing on personal life contexts. Early works showed personal home photos or nudes, presenting a poetic life and warm domestic relations. Later, she went outdoors, showing herself viewing bright natural scenery (back to the audience), full of romantic sentiment. The series resembles film plots, evoking the imagery of 19th-century German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.

Shilpa Gupta (born 1976), a prominent Indian artist, excels in multi-media and new technology, famous for sculptures and paintings made of stainless steel pots. Her work involves broad philosophical and political issues, such as racial violence, organ trafficking, and disappearance in armed conflicts. During her residency, she completed two monument-form works, the most dramatic and experimental being a video projection that brings viewers into an extraordinary interactive experience through tactile imagery or interaction.

Finally, there is the notable work of Korean artist Kim Soo-ja (born 1976): a truck loaded with luggage wrapped in colorful cloths, and a monument-form video where the artist sits atop the truck laden with cloth-wrapped luggage (back to the audience), slowly driving through Paris streets facing the changing world. Both works are titled Bottari truck-Migrateures, clearly indicating that refuge and displacement are the core of her exploration.