Promised Land is a compressed earth sculpture that was erected at the Tuileries du Louvre during summer 2018. This 1 ton totem built in Versailles, moved and then raised like an obelisk integrated the surrounding geometry of Le Nôtre. From the extraction to the moment when it was hoisted by hand, all the events of its construction were exposed as part of a global odyssey of which it was the symbol, from the object to the tools, like the form works: negative paintings of the shared process.
In its brutality, it presented itself as an ambiguous object which pushed to reconsider the relationships to matter, construction, monument and landscape to make present a free nature, by a process of disintegration until the formation of a garden.
« City has forgotten its true nature. How to bring it back ? We offer a compressed earth column that will catch the seams conveyed by wind and animals. With the time it will fall down, eroded by climate and roots, to create a garden at its base. »
« This earth totem is made to be installed in sterile environments such as streets but also in gardens. It creates a new vision of nature in cities and a new type of gardens. The sculpture creates an environment between imposition and liberty that is given to observation. »
Building earth totems of almost a ton is offering a receptacle allowing the coming of a lost nature. By anchoring these monuments in the urban fabric, they give nature the support to reconquest, to change the landscape. Delivered to the colonization of seeds brought by the wind and the animals, the totems disintegrate and erode in an uncontrolled action due to the development of plants, the climate,… They crumble until forming a micro-landscape at their base. By destroying itself, a new type of park is born between imposition and freedom. They show a new methodology linked to time. This process creates different public spaces, witnesses and victims of the growth of wilderness. They make its presence visible and anchor it in an urban everyday life: the resulting landscape is conducive to observation.
The global development of the project still remains in the mind of many. It became a sort of Odyssey that is being told and imagined. What has left a mark and surprised us the most was the synergy surrounding the project. It became a real totem uniting us around it is a common tale. All the workers involved in helping at different steps of the development created a sort of community: surpassing ourselves for a symbolic object. »
Artists: nous – GuilhemSolère & Telmo Escapil-Inchauspé
Sketches: nous
Photographer: Pierre-Louis Mabire