Histoire et destin - No Man’s Land (Nativity)
«I worked long time with the poorest immigrants, with refugees, with illegals. I saw hundreds of rooms roughly furnished with objects found in the garbage to give the impression of a house, of a safe place, of a fragile moment of stability and dignity. All these rooms were looking exactly like the cave of Bethlehem.
In the church of Saint Marie Madeleine, in Lille, there is a side chapel that gives me the impression of Europe today. It is an architecture that outlived its function, outlived its people. There are no more images, there is no altar, and the tabernacle is empty. There is no more God there nor believers. It is what remains of a spiritual place. It is a sumptuous skeleton of something. Europe looks the same to me.
Maybe the death of Europe has been perfectly described by Louis Ferdinand Céline in his “trilogie allemande”. Anyway, even if the land is dead, babies continue to born on its soil, in the precarious rooms that I just mentioned. It will happen even on the coming Christmas night as it happened 2015 years ago in a family of refugees».
This work has been made by the artist as a gift for the celebration of Christmas 2015 in the city of Lille, where he was hosted by the town for an artist residency.
