Des/astres is Rezaire's first solo institutional exhibition in Paris. The show features the concluding work in a trilogy that explores the links that humankind has forged with the cosmos.
Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris is currently showing an exhibition featuring Des/astres, a film by Tabita Rezaire, as part of Open Space #16. This is Rezaire's first solo institutional exhibition in Paris. The presentation of Des/astres at the Fondation was made possible through the Open Space program, which provides the opportunity for a first solo exhibition and the production of a new work.
Des/astres (2024) is the concluding film of a trilogy made by the artist in which she manifests the links that humankind has forged with the cosmos. Megalithic monuments, sites of ancient power that served as astronomical observatories, are the focal axis around which Rezaire weaves her sidereal narratives, binding together water, forest, stone and sky in an uplifting prayer that soars to the heavens.
Unfolding in four chapters that find their totemic presentation in the aforementioned elements, Rezaire takes testimonies gathered from tradition keepers, shamans, astrophysics and researchers, tearing asunder the conceptual veil to uncover the metaphysical legacy of the Guiana Shield in the Amazon Forest, a land where ancestral knowledge coexists with contemporary scientific theories. Des/astres is screened under the canopy of a carbet – a type of Guyanese vernacular architecture – that symbolically embodies the World Tree.
Tabita Rezaire is a French new media artist of Guianese-Danish descent whose multidisciplinary approach links together art, science, spirituality and innovative new technologies, while also assessing the underlying issues that stem from the concepts of race, intersectional politics and Afro-feminism. Rezaire's Des/astres was co-commissioned by Fondation Louis Vuitton and TBA21 and has been also presented at Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid.
Des/astres is on view at Fondation Louis Vuitton through August 31, 2025. For more on this and other exhibitions at the Fondation, visit their site.