Sylvain Couzinet-Jacques

Eden

Aperture Foundation

New York, 547 West 27th Street 4th Floor

Eden is a long-term artistic project helmed by French photographer Sylvain Couzinet-Jacques, commissioned by Fondation d’enterprise Hermès in collaboration with Aperture Foundation where the exhibition, featuring various documentations of a building the artist purchased in Eden, North Carolina, will remain on view. The exhibition is presented as part of Immersion: A French American Photography Commission. 

The Little Red Schoolhouse, found image on a local newspaper (original image circa 1907), 2015

The ideas of home, belonging, and displacement are at the core of the artist’s investigative project, for which she invited a group of fellow artists to this building called the Little Red Schoolhouse. The artists from various parts of the globe embarked on a multidisciplinary collaboration using video, sculpture, Polaroid photography, ephemera, and found objects to define home as opposed to a house, a property or a place. 

On the other hand, the project aims to contextualize utopia in the sense of a shelter, both metaphorically and literally. Constructed in partnership with architects Jérémie Dalin and Sylvia Bourgoin as well as with environmental guidance by urban sustainability non-profit organization NY Sun Works, a greenhouse installation that houses works by participating artists, writers and filmmakers welcomes the visitors to the exhibition. 

November 17, 2016 — January 19, 2017