This foot is a tribute to humans, to walkers. After discovering an article on the internet in 2015 about an Aleppo soap company that was continuing to operate in the north of Aleppo in Syria. I learned that the branch of this company was in Lyon, where I lived at the time. So I contacted NAJEL to propose a collaboration, which they accepted.

So I sculpted a realistic, academic foot from a clay model, which I then used to make a silicone mould. The mould travelled from Villeurbanne to Aleppo. They moulded fresh Aleppo soap inside and sent back the foot, which travelled for a year under bombardment before returning to Villeurbanne in early 2017.

The soap speaks of our fragility as human beings. It speaks of human finitude. It is symbolically a metonymy of man. It evokes displacement, it speaks of war, of flows, it could be ‘zombie-footed’, it could be an ex-voto. A sculpture to make a wish so that our humanity remains standing.

The heritage of anthropological museums, monuments and steles, linked to colonial and post-colonial histories, are the research engines for the sculptural landscapes she elaborates. With the support of Western and overseas (Haiti) tales and legends, Gaëlle Choisne reveals the traces of a mute history, and thus summons the idea of a local exoticism.

With its title evoking one of the world’s largest slums located in Haiti, the installation Cité Soleil (2014) functions as the backbone of this exhibition: a veritable landscape that is both strangely chaotic and ordered, this protean structure gives rhythm to the space while serving as a support for the presentation of sculptures, photographs, and videos, among which Cric Crac, which gives its title to the exhibition. In Cric Crac #1 (2013), Gaëlle Choisne went to Haiti to film two guides at the colonial museum in Moulin-sur-Mer who tell stories about zombies – an eminently political and colonial figure – and Haitian werewolves.

She continues this investigation in Cric Crac #2 (2015), which documents and exposes some of the complexities of Haitian culture as it confronts the weight of dominant imperialism. The artist’s attraction to the blending of cultures is reflected in a series of works produced especially for the exhibition, inspired by the ancient heritage of the City of Vienna.

Between occult fables and objective science, between Caribbean Haiti and and ancient Vienna, Gaëlle Choisne proposes to the visitor to wander in a universe rich universe of multiple references, constituting by that very fact as many tracks to to understand a post-colonial universe that constantly oscillates between between fiction and reality, nostalgia and fantasy.

Exhibition realized with the kind collaboration of the Centre de Restauration et d’Études Archéologiques Municipal (CRÉAM), and the Museums of Vienna.