Sucre de l'est / Sugar of the East
La Box / ENSA, Bourges, FR
12. 11. 2020 – 11. 1. 2021
curator: Ferenc Gróf / FR/HU
exhibiting artists: Ilona Németh / SK, Fokus Grupa / HR, Graciela Carnevale / AR, Chris Marker / FR, Olivier Marboeuf / FR, Ludovic Bernhardt / FR, Luz Blanco / FR, Matteo Locci / IT, Mariana Lombard / AR, Thibaut Gauthier / FR, Kyo Kim / FR/KR, Samuel Ferretto / FR, Hanna Kokolo / FR, Anna Ponchon / FR, Honoré Daumier / FR
The bittersweet history of an industry which fueled globalisation from the time of the Atlantic trade triangle to the continental blockade of the Napoleonic era and right up to the modern-day neoliberal wars. The collective exhibition "Sucre de l'est" sketches out a hybrid kaleidoscopic panorama with the sugar cane plantations of the former sugar islands, factory ruins of the so called post-socialist zones, green fields of boosted monocultures, picket lines and ziggurats of sugar cubes. The battle of the bloated continental beet and the scrawny colonial cane depicted by Honoré Daumier in 1838 on the pages of the satirical magazine Le Charivari constitutes the starting point of this research stretching through centuries. The works in the exhibition challenge the discordant restraints of imperialism, the "laissez faire" of the mighty and the ideology behind the sweat of sugar.
[Preview image: Chris Marker: The battle for the 10 million, 1970 © Slon-Iskra]
