Zone interdite

2019 - installation: 193 embroidered postcards

In 1768, the French explorer Bougainville dropped anchor at Otaheite (Tahiti). The account of his stopover in the 'Voyage autour du monde' (1771) contributed to the creation of the myth of the 'Vahiné'; a wild and sexually liberated Eve who lives in an earthly paradise before original sin - a male myth.
Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear tests nearby, in the atolls of Fantagaufa and Moruroa. All 193 code names were given a cosmetic layer. Greek mythology has been used for the underground and underwater tests and celestial bodies for the atmospheric tests. On the map of the Hydrografic Service (Shom) the water inside these two atolls is becoming a 'zone interdite' (exclusion zone). Welcome to Dystopia!

Related to the publication Misunderstandings (2018):
https://balta.blogbird.nl/posts/show/13096
Photography : Natascha Libbert