Hans Ulrich Obrist Archives Chapter 3: Agnès Varda
A day without seeing a tree is a waste of a day
Adel Abdessemed
Nairy Baghramian
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
Douglas Gordon
Katharina Grosse
JR
Annette Messager
Laure Prouvost
Agnès Varda

01.07.2023—2024
Co-curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist (Senior Advisor), Arthur Fouray (Archivist and Curator) in close collaboration with Rosalie Varda
With the assistance of Lucas Jacques-Witz (Assistant Curator & Archivist)

LUMA Arles
Living Archives Programme
Arles, France
https://www.luma.org/en/arles/our-program/event/agnes-varda-un-jour-sans-voir-un-arbre-est-un-jour-perdu
Photographs: Arthur Fouray

‘A day without seeing a tree is a waste of a day’
Agnès Varda, June 2013

At the heart of the third chapter of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s archive at LUMA Arles lies his encounter with Agnès Varda (1928-2019). As a filmmaker, feminist, and pioneering artist, she played a central role in the French New Wave film movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In her own words, Varda’s artistic trajectory spans three distinct but interconnected lives as a photographer, filmmaker, and visual artist.

The exhibition highlights Obrist’s crucial role in introducing Varda to the art world. In 1991, he travelled to Paris for a residency at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Jouy-en-Josas, invited by Jean de Loisy and Marie-Claude Beaud. Over a three-month stay, Obrist visited over 300 artist studios, averaging five per day, where he met Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, who spoke at length about Agnès Varda and the scope of her work between fiction and documentary. From that moment on, he nurtured the dream of meeting her.

In 2002, thanks to Christian Boltanski and Annette Messager, Obrist finally had the opportunity to meet and film Varda at her magical house at 86 rue Daguerre, Paris. After this interview, Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Rirkrit Tiravanija, invited Agnès Varda to participate in Utopia Station, a section of the 50th Venice Biennale directed by Francesco Bonami in 2003. Varda’s proposal marked her debut as ‘an old filmmaker, but a young artist’ with the installation of her video triptych Patatutopia, which celebrates the sprouts and roots of heart-shaped potatoes. As she said: ‘I celebrate the resistance of this vegetable. I have the utopia of thinking that one can see the beauty of the world in a sprouted potato.’

After half a century of cinema, Utopia Station opened the door for Agnès Varda to explore new possibilities for engaging with multiscreen displays of moving images, multisensory experiences, and tactile elements. She continually experimented with exhibitions throughout the last 15 years of her life, as is evident in some of the unique works loaned by Rosalie Varda, Mathieu Demy, and Ciné-Tamaris. The starting point of her first major solo exhibition, L’ Île et Elle [The Island and Her], at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2006, was the island of Noirmoutier that she discovered thanks to Jacques Demy. Varda introduced her now iconic cinema shacks. Each shack, whose structure is made of film reels, corresponds to a film she made. The last hut she built during her lifetime, My Shack of Cinema : The Greenhouse of Le Bonheur in 2018, is on display in the Archives Gallery at LUMA Arles.

The friendship between Varda and Obrist grew through numerous interviews and projects, with Obrist attending nearly all her exhibitions and Varda participating in the Serpentine conversation marathons in London. Obrist regularly visited her on rue Daguerre, sometimes with Maja Hoffmann, with whom Varda shared a deep affinity for Arles, photography, cinema, and contemporary art. During their last meeting on March 3, 2019, Varda invited artist friends and close ones ones to participate in the making of her last work, Les Mains complices [Partnering Hands], featuring intertwined hands of couples surrounded by heart potatoes, a celebration of love.

Her spirit continues to inspire artists who crossed her path, as well as those who share her thirst for freedom, adventure, curiosity, and audacity. A vibrant testimony is provided by the eight posters created especially for this exhibition by Adel Abdessemed, Nairy Baghramian, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Katharina Grosse, JR, Annette Messager, and Laure Prouvost. Her thoughts, forever, exalt the beauty of life’s simple things: ‘A day without seeing a tree is a waste of a day.’

Acknowledgements

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Arthur Fouray wish to thank Maja Hoffmann for her vision and passion for archives; and extend their gratitude to Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Mustapha Bouhayati, Matthieu Humery, Christophe Danzin, Anna von Brühl, Friedrich von Brühl, and the LUMA Dream Team.

First and foremost, we wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to Rosalie Varda, Mathieu Demy, and the family of Agnès Varda; to the team of Ciné-Tamaris, especially Shérine El Sayed Taih and Jules Martin, but also Elvire Dolgorouky, Eric Leprêtre, Stanislas Biessy, Léna Cervoni; to the Nathalie Obadia Gallery, to Nathalie Obadia and her team including Marie Bernard, Agathe Cordoliani, Alizée Gex; as well as the artists who participated in the exhibition: Annette Messager and the Marian Goodman Gallery, Adel Abdessemed and his team including Lisa Rey-Galiay, Nairy Baghramian accompanied by Nicolas Hsiung, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon supported by David Sharp, Katharina Grosse and her collaborators Natalija Martinovic and Kristin Rieber, JR and his studio: Marc Azoulay, Camille Pajot, Marie-Dominique Plumejeau Tapin, and finally Laure Prouvost with the help of Mona Pouillon.

Our special thanks go to Luz Gyalui and the LUMA Arles production team, especially Alice Cattelat, Barbara Blanc, Laura Majan, Juliette Kernin, Jihye Kim; to Dimitri Bruni, Manuel Krebs, and Ludovic Varone of NORM for the layout of Agnès Varda’s Post-it notes; to Amélie Busi and the LUMA Arles communication team, Christine Denamur and Maria Luisa Rojano for the realisation of the exhibition poster and the signage; to Luana Terrasse for coordination and proofreading the texts. Many thanks also to Max Shackleton, Producer, and Lorraine Two Testro, Head of Operations and Planning for Hans Ulrich Obrist; Céline Miquelis for the installation of the cabins and cinema models; to Christophe Vallaux; to Julia Fabry; to Hervé Chandès, Pierre-Édouard Couton and the team of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain; to the Institut pour la photographie des Hauts- de-France, Lille; to the Serpentine team; to agnès b., Élodie Cazes, William Massey and the team of the Fonds de dotation agnès b.; to Charlotte Horn and Carl Davies of FACT Liverpool; to Alexander S. C. Rower and the Calder Foundation; to Sintagma, and in particular Ana Beatriz Gonçalves, Rosário Valadas Vieira and Renato Barcelos, for the subtitling of archival videos; to Jesus Plaëttner, for the mastering and audio restoration of archival videos; to Gérard Issert, Granon Digital, Paris for the digital prints; to Thibault Verdon and the IDzia team, Marc Rodrigues, Damien Poggiali, Arthur Aigon, Philippe Arnaud, Pascal Picard, for the audiovisual set up; Gilles Pennegaggi and all the exhibition installation teams, in particular Victor Jaget, Mathieu Hengevelt for the hanging, and Xavier Ressegand; Olivier Fisher for the carpentry; Florence Cuschieri and Stephanie Jabir for the condition reports; to the César Workshop for the production of model bases, Œil de Lynx for the wallpaper installation; Atelier SHL for the prints, Acoplast for the signage and label elements; and finally, to all those who have participated in the development of the exhibition, including Claire Charrier, Lucas Jacques-Witz, Koo Jeong A, Adèle Koechlin, Molly Nesbit, Chiara Parisi, Jean-François Raffalli, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Manuella Vaney and Josh Willdigg.

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