Isabelle RocheMars, 220 Million Years Later
Isabelle RocheMars, fascinated by the coccolithophores, unicellular algae invisible to the naked eye, allows us to access the beauty of these organisms which, despite their apparent fragility, have defied destruction since time immemorial. After observing pictures taken with an electron microscope, the artist was able to recover coccoliths and then reduce them to powder, thus constituting a white limestone sediment which, once combined with an acrylic binder, became the paint with which she made her coccolith chimeras. Without her paintings, these organisms would have remained invisible to us, while projecting us into an unimaginable temporality. In fact, RocheMars, by questioning what we retain of the reality of the world, has long been questioning these notions of time and memory. This recent work echoes her previous works, her Reliquaries, her sculptures of boxes in which she places plant or mineral objects that she collects during her travels. The coccoliths are also tiny boxes, and each one contains a microscopic cell which, because of its pigmentation, appears golden under the microscope. JC
What are your Microscopic Relics for you? The medium I use is based on coccoliths, which are unicellular algae that have been growing in sea water for 220 million years, and the skeletons of which, when they die, are deposited on the sea bed. This limestone skeleton is shaped like a microscopic box. There are many different types of microalgae with different box shapes. Depending on their type, coccoliths are markers of the temperature of the sea at the time they were alive.
Coccoliths aren’t visible to the naked eye. However, they make up the chalk with which we used to write on blackboards. My husband, a researcher, studies these micro-organisms by collecting them at the bottom of the sea using cores that bring up a white mud, which is then filtered. I was able to see electron microscope images of these little structures—these little relics— and I thought they were fantastic! What amazed me the most was that each of these organisms casts a shadow, that their shapes were extremely complex, and that they’d remained intact on the seabed—for thousands of years—under tons and tons of cubic metres of water and rock!
HERMETIC RELICS
It’s with this powder that you paint your imaginary coccoliths. With the filtered coccoliths we obtain a pure sediment that looks like a pigment, which I bind with chemical binders. I can then use it to paint on a black background. This paint stands the test of time because it’s based on unalterable limestone fossils trapped in the binder.
Why the term “relic”, which has such a strong sacred connotation? Is it because of the operation—akin to alchemy—that reveals them? Initially, the term “relic” didn’t have this sacred meaning for me. From 2014 onwards I’d made hermetic boxes that I called Reliquaries. I placed objects in them that couldn’t be seen, and that also remained invisible. As the coccoliths are in the form of boxes, they became, for me, a sort of mise en abîme of my previous invisible relics. In each case you have to believe in them a little to imagine what they contain... Inside these little boxes the centre’s golden, as if luminous, and
for us to be able to observe them under the electron microscope they have to be sprinkled with gold with a very beautiful device that emits a violet flash when it sprays the sample with the gold. This gold that’s dispersed, as well as the golden colour of the chloroplasts, obviously reminds me of a hidden treasure—precious, protected—which is there waiting for who knows what for millennia.
The coccoliths you paint aren’t representations of what you’ve seen, but phantasmagoric interpretations. I immediately wanted to make chimeras out of all these forms, in order to give them my own graphic style, my own personal touch. As I progressed, scientists—who live around me—came by to see my work, and talking with them I learned there were indeed some sorts of chimeras of coccoliths. It was getting dizzying!There’s something unheard of about looking for forms that, although invisible, already exist, even if they aren’t the same as mine.
You become the repository of an infinite temporality, and you give us something inaccessible. These micro-algae become visible in a different way because I bring them into my world with their own timelessness. By my painting them on a black background, they acquire a personality that they’d never have had otherwise. They’re there, on this black background that absorbs the light while propelling us towards infinity.
Could these micro-algae floating in space and time be like metaphors for ourselves? More like the relationship I can have with a photo. For example, I always wonder how it’s possible that I look at a photo of Victor Hugo. For me he doesn’t exist as a person, and to see him there all of a sudden incarnated is unheard of! It’s the same with coccoliths. Why do these objects exist? Why are they so tiny? Why can I reveal them and make them visible? To be able to make visible what you don’t understand, even though it’s more important than many other things, is a matter of wonder.
This invisible reality’s a pivotal point in your work. I’ve been wondering for a long time about what’s shown, about what we go to see in a museum. What’s important from the point of view of art? We’re bombarded with images, concepts, things that go in all directions, including towards nothing, and I wanted to be at the opposite end of the spectrum. I found there was something stronger in the mystery of what was already there...
Recently during an exhibition I did something very representative: I held in my closed hand a shooting star that had been found in sediments at the bottom of the sea. The simple fact that I’d hidden something real there, which appealed to the imagination, took the visitors to a different reality. Of course, everyone wanted to see that shooting star, but I never opened my hand.
FROMTHE PARTHENONTOTOULOUSE
Your Reliquaries were exhibited in a museum of Gallo-Roman antiques. At first I thought about the containers and made a number of empty boxes, then I wondered about what you bring back from a trip. Most people take photographs, but I preferred to bring back minerals and plants. For example, in Greece I collected things from the Parthenon, I kept them in little bags on which I noted where I’d found them, and once I’d arrived in my studio, I built reliquaries around these “relics”. My work was exhibited in the showcases of the Musée Saint-Raymond of Toulouse among Gallo-Roman objects. On my labels I’d indicated the date and place of collection as well as the GPS coordinates. Once placed in these showcases, my objects were presented as antiquities. That was my problem: at what point are we led to regard something as interesting?
How are you working with your Diatoms now? Diatoms are different algae because they contain silica, they are a bit bigger, and they can also be found in fresh water.They’re very diverse in shape and can move around in the water, as if they were half plant, half animal. When we look at them under the electron microscope, we can see they escape a little bit, that they slide and shift.That’s why I liked to play with this phenomenon and sometimes paint fragmented forms. As they’re made of glass, in painting with their powder I tried to play with their transparency. This powder’s abrasive, you mustn’t inhale it. It’s also funny: it’s used on hens with lice. It shatters the lice and kills them!
Jacqueline Caux is a film producer, documentary filmmaker and curator. In 2019, she awarded the honorary prize for the 9th edition of the Festival international du Livre d’art et du Film (Filaf) in Perpignan.