« Hémimétabolie » is a series of watercolors on paper. On the white sheet, are drawn in pencil of wood the outline of two, three, four or nine “carrond”. The “carrond” is a shape created by melting a half square and a half round. Each square is filled, in part or in whole, with pigments blue or red, sometimes both. The shapes are repeated but their colors vary from blue to red, from light to dark.
The artist here symbolizes the vast whitening of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia caused by above-average ocean temperatures resulting in the expulsion of symbiotic algae which gives the coral its color and nutrients. The wonderful colors of the coral, such as pink, are being replaced by a ghostly white. Reefs can recover from if the water cools, but they can also die if the phenomenon persists. It also highlights how Heliopora coerulea or blue coral is today the only species of its kind, while there are a few 100 million years ago, it dominated most of the world’s oceans. Its blue that at the time of his death, when the small polyps disappear, leaving the skeleton, otherwise only these white tentacles are visible under water when it is alive!
The title of the series comes from hemimetabolism, which defines a singular metamorphosis in insects. The young individual undergoes several changes to become an adult individual, without by a stage of inactivity and without stopping to feed. She connects it with the quote of Sheikh Hamidou Kane "Sometimes the metamorphosis doesn’t end, it puts us in the hybrid and leaves us there." from The Ambiguous Adventure.
Maud Louvrier Clerc evokes through this series the specificity of a metamorphic process, permanent and infinite.
Solo Shows - Les Architectes - White Room Gallery, Paris
