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Latifa Echakhch presents Le Jardin Mécanique at Villa Sauber @NMNM.MC

Latifa Echakhch presents a new installation conceived specifically for the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco – Villa Sauber. Curated by Célia Bernasconi, the exhibition combines references to the development of modern Monte-Carlo – such as the construction of the Opéra Garnier and the luxuriant gardens of exotic plants – with the artists’ own impressions and childhood memories.

Invited by the NMNM to create new works for her exhibition, Latifa Echakhch selected numerous details from the paper set models designed by Alphonse Visconti, the decorator of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo from 1903 to 1924, which she then produced as stage sets. In the exhibition space, she unfolds a landscape as artificial as it is fantasized, composed of fragments of scenery for productions such as Pompeii, Rigoletto, or Masques and Bergamasques, which offer a distant echo to Verlaine’s Fêtes Galantes or to the Méditations Poétiques composed on the shores of Lac du Bourget.

Read the full article here

Alphonse Visconti Maquette de décor pour « Masques et Bergamasques » (détail), 1919 Crayon graphite, encre de chine et gouache sur papier 28 x 55 x 40 cm Archives Monte-Carlo S.B.M. en dépôt permanent au NMNM, n° D.2010.3.86

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