TEVA at Villa Datris: Crossing Over

Overwhelmed by the heat, doubting that the earth will ever be hospitable again, are we not like Noah and the bird in an ark that no longer sails on water but on fire?

I had planned to write to you about the meaning of Teva, which in Hebrew signifies both ark and word. About God choosing to drown his creation because language has broken and become deceitful. About the flood that not only erases moral collapse but opens the possibility of a new beginning.

The contemporary reality, the violence, the excessive heat of recent weeks, the metal of Teva heated white-hot, the bird trapped in the furnace, fire against water, all of these suddenly brought me back to Dante’s Inferno. The hell of the Divine Comedy, a place where the damned, frozen in what they have become, repeat their truth eternally.

Hell as the impossibility of metamorphosis, a place without escape not because it is locked, but the will has been abolished.

But Noah’s Ark, Teva, is precisely the opposite; confinement is temporary, will and hope are possible. The ark, the word, are not destinations. They are points of departure.

The question Teva poses is not how to survive, but how to leave. With what words, what acts, to return to the world? If the bird were in Dante’s universe, it would be in a place where nothing can happen. The ark is its opposite. It confines in order to make transformation possible. It has meaning only because one day it will have to be left. At the heart of the ark, does the red bird wait, watch, brood over a world still invisible?

I don’t know.

But no ark is meant to be inhabited forever. They exist, often without our knowing, sometimes made of fire, sometimes of ice, sometimes of steel, to preserve, for as long as necessary, what will allow us to begin again. I want to believe that every enclosure holds within it an exit.

Teva is in the gardens of the Villa Datris Foundation in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue until November 1st. If your steps lead you there, you will know how to reassure the red bird awaiting you in the heart of the steel.

May we preserve that part of ourselves that still allows us to name justly, to discern, to transmit, and to hope. And finally, may we find the way to a world we will have helped repair.

OPENING HOURS

Open continuously on Sundays and public holidays.

May–June: 11am–1pm / 2pm–6pm, Wednesday to Saturday

July–August: 10am–1pm / 2pm–7pm, every day except Tuesday

September–October: 11am–1pm / 2pm–6pm, Wednesday to Saturday

Free admission.

ACCESSIBILITY

Three levels of the Villa’s exhibition spaces are accessible to visitors with reduced mobility.
Only assistance animals are permitted in the Villa and gardens.