TEVA at Villa Datris : Invitation

On May 15, Teva will come ashore in the garden of Villa Datris Foundation in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, which is dedicating its upcoming exhibition to the Mediterranean: Contemporary Odysseys. Between passages, migrations, fractures and transmissions, the exhibition explores what it means to cross, to leave, and to start anew. Tevanaturally finds its place there. It will remain on view until November 1.

Created in 2017 in Geneva for the Meyrin Alpine Botanical Garden, Teva evokes Noah’s Ark, not only as a biblical narrative, but as a founding image of a world that has become uninhabitable, one that must be crossed in the hope of rebirth. The ark carries the fragile promise of an after.

Made of raw steel, too dense for any vessel, Teva can neither float nor set sail. This immobility does not cancel the journey: it displaces it.It is an overturned, rusted roof that lays bare its red interior, still alive despite the passage of time. A porthole opens onto a suspended nest where a bird waits. Verses 8–9 of Genesis are engraved there: those of the first flight, when the bird leaves the ark to seek land, and returns without having found it. The work is situated in this precise moment: before the olive branch, before the promise.

Time, rust, the noise of the world, and the invitation from Villa Datrishave shifted the ark of Teva. It is not a simple refuge; it is a space of suspension, between protection and departure, between confinement and the possibility of emergence. All odysseys, those of Gilgamesh, Sinuhe, Ulysses, and the Mediterranean migrants, are transformative journeys, passages between what we leave behind and what we must learn to inhabit. In 2017, I wondered whether Teva was a cocoon or a nest. In 2026, no metamorphosis is perceptible. The bird should have flown. We are that bird.

I hope we will meet in the magnificent gardens of Villa Datris, and that the bird soon will find the path to a habitable world, for itself as well as for us.

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.