Turning the spotlight on life and landscapes of Reunion Island

The curtain went up connected a month-long festival hosted by the Alliance Française de Pondichéry spotlighting the landscapes, euphony and lit of Reunion Island, a French Overseas Department successful the Indian Ocean that shares centuries-old humanities ties with Puducherry.

The ‘Month of Reunion Island’ fete opened with a photograph exposition by 2 artists — Ysabelle Gomez and Laurent de Gebhardt — that seizure beingness connected the island, often weaving the poetic with the political, and the subjective recollections with the spatial representation of a land.

The works question to connection an immersive penetration into the psyche of a spot that is location to volcanic landscapes, rainforests and coral reefs, a vibrant philharmonic legacy, and surviving traditions shaped by intersecting influences of Africa, Europe, and Asia (India).

In her photograph series, “Dig-Dig”, Ysabelle pairs each of her frames with a proverb successful Creole. The assemblage of enactment highlights the practice of Réunion not lone done the quality of its intimate and dreamlike landscapes, but besides done its language, with an adage with a portion of philosophical contented accompanying each representation — for instance, a scenery framework gets caller meaning done the travel successful lines “The destiny of the upland ends successful the sea. Let things travel their course, it is fate”.

Ysabelle, a lensman who lives and works successful Réunion Island, was calved successful Saint-Étienne (France), to a Réunionese parent and a begetter from Auvergne with Spanish and Tunisian origin, frankincense her Creole-Zoreille identity. It was aft 4 years of solo question astir the satellite (1998 to 2002) that she turned a photographer.

An autarkic creator since 2004, she casts “an engaged and activistic regard connected the world, often presenting a antithetic imaginativeness of the Indian Ocean region”, and prompting an introspection connected environment, society, ecology and ancestral knowledge.

“Cilaos: A Circus, A Spirit” by Gebhardt captures the distant colony of Cilaos, blending its melodramatic volcanic landscapes with the regular lives and tone of its inhabitants.

The creator introduces viewers to a acceptable of fascinating radical from the Bras Sec neighbourhood, specified arsenic Jannick Gonthier who owns the lone lentil making instrumentality successful the vicinity, Christian Dijoux, a vine-grower-turned restaurateur, oregon Daniella Turpin, a flourishing integrated husbandman who was among the galore to conflict done favoritism to constitute their occurrence story.

The fete has successful store a assortment of free-entry events crossed concerts, movie screenings, lectures, conferences, publication talks, workshops, and exhibitions, to item multifarious aspects of Reunion Island. Expositions and concerts person besides been scheduled astatine Alliance chapters successful different cities done October.