The Etrillard Foundation is collaborating for the first time with a Lyon institution by supporting the Forms of Ruin exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, which runs from December 1, 2023, to March 3, 2024.
From the Roman Empire to the imaginary worlds of video games, through Egypt, the Americas, and to the most distant civilizations, this thematic exhibition establishes a dialogue between all types of ruins. The aim is to question societies throughout history and, at the same time, to discover the work done by contemporary artists in their desire to document and interpret the ruins of our industrial societies and to imagine our future.
Johann Oswald Harms, Landscape with Ruins (Treasure Seekers), 1673, Hamburger Kunsthalle, © BPK, Berlin, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Christoph Irrgang
The exhibition looks at all forms of engagement with ruins, whether it involves collecting fragments of human activities on and in the ground, arranging natural spaces for memorial or religious purposes, or the construction of edifices such as megaliths, pyramids, and the engineering structures of great empires. It aims to organize a sort of journey of ruins, a continuous dialogue between civilizations around four themes: memory and oblivion, the balance between nature and culture, the link between the material and immaterial, and the tension between present and future.
Syria, Palmyra, Funerary bas-relief in the name of Malikou, 2nd century AD, Roman period. Dupont-Sommer Bequest. Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. Image © Lyon MBA – Photo Alain Basset
Conceived from the reflections of Alain Schnapp, archaeologist and historian, author of the important A Universal History of Ruins published in 2020, Forms of Ruin aims to offer the public a plastic and visual transposition of his thoughts, with over 300 works presented, from tribal arts to contemporary art. Sylvie Ramond, Director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon and Chief Heritage Curator, is also the curator of the exhibition.
These bridges created between past heritage and the contemporary world naturally echo the Etrillard Foundation’s credo.
Randa Maddah, Majdal Shams, 1983, Light Horizon, 2012, Artist’s Collection © Randa Maddah