LVMH Métiers d’Art Presents the Exhibition “une cosmogonie d’océans” Culminating the Artistic Residency of Josèfa Ntjam
Twelve sculptures installed in an abandoned space: Josèfa Ntjam offers us an immersion into the depths, fed by mythological tales from West and Central Africa. New embodiments of ancestral divinities, hybrid beings from some undefinable time. These characters were born from the artist’s earlier digital works, including films and installations, combining scientific research, socio-philosophical concepts, and mythologies with new technologies.
Josèfa Ntjam developed a series of characters for the LVMH Métiers d’Art Résidence Artistique, like a proposal for new techno-artisanal iterations that speak to us of an ancient future, a timeframe that never ceases to slip away. Since the establishment of LVMH Métiers d’Art in 2015, the aim of its artistic residency program has been to forge new links between artists and craftsmen. The selected resident is provided raw materials – often rare, luxurious, different from what they are accustomed to working with – and is guided over the course of a year through the process of shaping them using tools, methods, and techniques specific to the LVMH Métiers d’Art house that will produce the artist’s project.
For the entire year 2023, Josèfa Ntjam worked in the workshops based in Paris and in Portugal of the Jade Groupe, specialized in luxury metalworking, acquired by LVMH Métiers d’Art in 2021.
Each residency surprises us for the extent of its impact,” observes Jean Baptiste Voisin, LVMH Chief Strategy Officer and President of LVMH Métiers d’Art. The exhibition titled une cosmogonie d’océans will run until 25 March in Paris on Rue de Richelieu.
During the opening, we met Kiddy Smile, Harry Nuriev, Hugo Marchand, Charles de Vilmorin, Hybra, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Thomas Lélu, Axel Ibot, Marion Motin, Yorgo Tloupas, Bertrand Burgalat, Catherine Baba, Diane Pernet, Mathias Kiss, Oswaldo Nicoletti, Daria de Beauvais, Lorena Vergani, Hervé Mikaeloff, Elie Top, and Bruno Frisoni.
Photos: Jean Picon
