Spirit of Snails 2018-24

Snails, along with crickets, were toys of my early childhood. I loved watching snails slide across my hand; and later, when I was able to catch them myself, I would hold them captive between my fingers for hours on end, singing nursery rhymes to them. I was fascinated by the increasing and decreasing mobility of its horns. I sang and sang, convinced that my singing would sooner or later bring it out of its shell, and that it would treat me to a dance.

I sang tirelessly over and over, varying the rhythmic movement. The sound and rhythm amused me much more than the meaning: Sên sển sền sên “snail, snail, snail, snail, you will become a princess, dance for me and I will sew you a red shirt and black pants.” This recitation was like a game based on the musicality of the language intrinsic to the words, and I never tired of it.

My first encounter with Prévert was reading the poem Song of the Snails Going to the Funeral. Its story seemed familiar to me from the first reading, as it spoke to my emotions; I didn't understand the stories of coffins and I didn't grasp the magnitude of the event, but I felt their gravity. I loved the story in this song because it brought back memories of the atmosphere at large funerals in Vietnam. Similar to parades, colors and sounds accompanied the laudatory banners. A feast was served to honor the soul in the afterlife.

Song of the Snails Going to the Funeral brought back those carefree moments. I can also hear the crickets singing at the top of their lungs, and I can see the air in their wings sharpening the shrillness of the vibrations. Often, the spirit of the poem revisits me and delights me with the joy of Nature, which in a harmless and mysterious way predestines us to our own disappearance. The words “take back your colors, the colors of life” express in a way Prévert's heart and way of thinking about existence.

The Olympic Games event in Paris bringing together world champions gave me the opportunity to celebrate the feats at which snails are champions. The performance of their muscle is their common point: the snail, equipped with a single muscle, the foot, –but what a muscle— is a model of moderation to preserve its endurance.

The pleasure of showing the intrinsic beauty of snails, both simple and complex, led me to solicit their participation in a playground where they could deliver the vibrations of their intuitive apprehension in resonance with the sound space of a ukulele. The instrument is animated by the perpetual movement of percussions produced by a toy monk equipped with a photoelectric cell.  

Deaf by nature, but sensitive to vibrations, the grace of their wanderings, the liveliness of their tentacles, their contortions in floral lace are all plastic elements to explore. They pose like true nude models in the studio.

Snails do not glide as the appearance of their movements would have us see; as with humans and other four-footed mammals, their movements leave mother-of-pearl imprints through rhythmic pressures along their path.   

The elongation of their foot, similar to a long neck raised in the void, gives the impression of measuring its exploration into the unknown.