“The trouble with humans is that they see the universe with their ideas rather than their eyes,” Boris Cyrulnik
Discovering the images of the creatures in the wooden slats of my terrace was a revelation for me. Not only did the striking resemblance to certain animals and their graphic beauty appeal to me, like a sudden attack of pareidolia, but above all the interpretation I made of them and the questions about the notion of perception that this raised.
I no longer saw the rectangular slat but animals printed in the wood of a tree, such as memories, photographs with the tree trunk as a darkroom and the wood as a printing medium. The tree became a lasting witness to history and captured images through its eye: The Eye of the Tree.
Several people smiled a little embarrassed when I told them about my discovery. This sudden attack of pareidolia must have hit her hard!
Recent scientific discoveries in the plant world have shown that there are human notions of communication and mutual aid between plants: an intelligence that humans had not imagined possible. Some had already felt or perceived it, while others needed proof. Our field of vision has widened.
What if trees could not only speak but also see? What if trees held the collective reason and consciousness of our world as a lasting witness?
This project was born out of my desire to combine knowledge with sensation, while leaving room for the imagination. I imagined a story with these frozen images of the creatures in the wood as a starting point and leitmotif, about the functioning of the planet, a great mechanism at the point of derailing, with the tree, holder of the collective reason, and a young adult at the centre of the cogs. A subject I am currently exploring in writing and in images.
