Ilona Mikneviciute © Yann Monel
Ilona Mikneviciute © Yann Monel
Ilona Mikneviciute © Yann Monel
Ilona Mikneviciute © Ilona Mikneviciute
Safeguarding heritage sites and environmental issues are subjects to which Ilona Mikneviciute is particularly attached. The Amiens Hortillonnages is one of those exceptional ecosystems that inspires her, with its landscapes that combine bodies of water, islets, gardens and cultures, in which the relationship between man and nature has been forged over the centuries.
Developed by man since the Middle Ages, the Hortillonnages form a natural environment of marshes. The extraction of peat, used as fuel, has greatly contributed to the shaping of the current site; human interventions have gradually redesigned the landscape. Like an echo of this relationship between man and nature, the artist proposes to create an enigmatic landscape by designing a set of islands on Clermont lake.
The Islets, with rounded volumes and bloated shapes, evoke the peaks of volcanoes that have emerged from the water. Composed of plants mounted on a light metal structure that is hollow inside, they are made using the technique of mosaic culture, a technique that consists of composing three-dimensional models of plants according to their colours and sizes.
Rocking by the movement of the water, the islets contribute to the evocation of a utopian landscape while questioning our ecological future. These mysterious installations, inscribed in the majestic Hortillonnages space, call for a return to nature, to a more natural environment.
The artist
Ilona Mikneviciute