Creolizing the landscape

What do we see in Marie Drouet's grand panorama if not a fragmented, chaotic landscape? Spanning the entire length of a ten-meter scroll, undulating in a powerful movement of snaking and jostling, the panorama is like a great river carrying everything in its flow: Chinese-style chunks of landscape alongside slopes seemingly torn from the Tuscan hills; masses of hair and long tresses alongside sedimentary rocks and Hercynian wrinkles; vegetal, organic or sexual forms alongside abstract motifs... So many alluviums which, like so many allusions, ultimately make up a polyphonic "chaos-mundus" (Glissant) rather than a monodic cosmos. After breaking with the spatial logic of the West (that of perspective), the great landscape invents another logic. Perhaps even the logic of a string of koan parables, those enigmatic parables which seem to have neither head nor tail, but which manage to plunge the Zen disciple's feeling and thinking into a state of bewilderment.

However, Marie Drouet's work is not just a deconstruction of the usual way of representing landscape, bequeathed to us by the Renaissance tradition. On a more hidden level, her works echo the Romantic aesthetic. The latter, breaking away from imitation, emphasized not only the fragmentary and the chaotic, but also the power of the imagination, the capacity of what Baudelaire called "the queen of all things" to make the unseen, which is working its mysterious work in the landscape, felt.

What can we see on Marie Drouet's large panorama if not a fragmented, chaotic landscape? Spread out along a ten-meter scroll, undulating in a powerful serpentine and tormented movement, the panorama is like a great river that carries everything: pieces of Chinese-style landscapes as well as sections of Tuscan hills; masses of hair and long braids as well as mineral sediments and Hercynian folds; plant, organic or sexual forms as well as abstract motifs.... So many alluviums, so many allusions that ultimately make a polyphonic "chaos-world" (Glissant) rather than a monodic cosmos. Having broken with the spatial logic specific to the West (that of perspective), the great landscape invents another logic. This could be, for example, that of a series of "koans", these enigmatic anecdotes, apparently without head or tail, but which nevertheless astound the sensitivity and thought of the Zen disciple.

But Marie Drouet's work is not just a deconstruction of the usual representation of landscape, the one we inherit from the Renaissance tradition. More secretly, it also echoes Romantic aesthetics. The latter, breaking with imitation, emphasized, along with fragment and chaos, the power of imagination, the capacity of what Baudelaire called the "queen of the faculties" to make the invisible at work in the landscape.