Farewell to Post-Colonialism, The Third Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China — Metallic structure, wood, bamboo, wire, shreded fabric, small boats inserted in the paper pulp — Lateral lighting — H. 220 x W. 550 x D. 150 cm.

A long red form stands, Herodote’s Vessel. A structure of metal and bamboo is covered by pulp made from shredded cloth. Embedded in this red matter, from stem to stern, hundreds of small boats and other fragmented objects have accumulated through the vessel’s journey. The boat emerges from its own shadow.

Herodote’s Vessel stands in silence. As the voyager, the vessel carries the burden of its own history. Herodote the traveller, dedicated observer, collector of legends, writer of history and tireless storyteller, navigated to unknown and faraway countries. Inspired by his travels, he invents places and landscapes, bringing together independent and non-chronological events and anecdotes to construct narratives. His vessel is a site of confluence in which he receives a diversity of readings and perceptions, which leads him to invent the condition for creation.

Herodote’s Vessel is also sea. Its undulating surface creates thousands of fleeting boats. Drifting on this swaying skin. Herodote, creator of tales stands as metaphor for the artist. Herodote’s Vessel, is a fictive boat, a voyager, an artist, an encountered landscape in which created fictions are crystallized.                                                                                      Herodote’s Vessel is an encounter with the other, it is an “experience of the diverse” (1). 

Michelle Héon, catalogue Farewell to Post-Colonialism, Guangdong Museum of Art, China, 2008.

1. SEGALEN, Victor, Essai sur l’exotisme : une esthétique du divers, Fata Morgana, Paris, 1978.