Clément Cogitore
Ferdinandea, the ephemeral island
Mucem, fort Saint-Jean—
Bâtiment Georges Henri Rivière
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From Wednesday 10 December 2025 to Sunday 24 May 2026
Between late June and mid-July 1831, underwater volcanic activity gave rise to a new island in the Mediterranean, in the Sicilian Channel opposite Tunisia. While sailors and inhabitants of the neighbouring coasts feared the awakening of a sea monster, the new territory aroused the curiosity of scientists and was coveted by European powers in the throes of colonial expansion. Within a few weeks, the island was claimed for its strategic position by Great Britain, France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, among others. However, the competition was short-lived: barely six months after its appearance, the newly-formed island sank beneath the waves of the Mediterranean. Its many names, however, remain recorded in European archives: "Ferdinandea" for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in honour of King Ferdinand II of Bourbon, "Julia" for the French in reference to the July Monarchy and "Graham" for the English after Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty. Now slumbering at a depth of just a few metres, the basaltic rock is being closely monitored by seismologists. Could a new eruption at any moment cause it to resurface, once again sparking geopolitical manoeuvres and the exploitation and exclusion of imperialist powers ?
Through the films, videos and photographs created for the exhibition, artist-philosopher Clément Cogitore speculates on the volcano's emergence, fall and possible re-emergence. Somewhere between documentary and fiction, his metaphorical intuition orchestrates premonitions, popular beliefs, archive documents and scientific and cartographic surveys: in his hands, "Ferdinandea" becomes a mirror of different relationships to the world and possible futures.
According to Cogitore's multi-faceted narrative, "Ferdinandea" is a submerged utopia/dystopia, a place of all possibilities from which the artist invites us to rethink the space of the "Middle Sea".
Curated by :
Kathryn Weir, art historian and exhibition curator
Hélia Paukner, Heritage Curator, Head of Contemporary Art Department, Mucem
Enguerrand Lascols, Heritage Curator, Domestic Life Department, Mucem
Initially displayed at MADRE (the Donnaregina Museum of Contemporary Art, in Naples from 24 June to 12 September 2022), the Marseilles version of the exhibition will benefit from the loan of new archives, a new scenographic concept and an expanded exhibition catalogue. Among the fifty or so works and archives on show at the Mucem (16 mm film, videos, photographs, graphic arts, archive documents, paintings), six works by Clément Cogitore will be presented, including five never before shown in France, with private and public, French and international loans.
- Clément Cogitore
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Born in Colmar in 1983, Clément Cogitore has developed an art at the crossroads of contemporary art and cinema. A resident of the Académie de France in Rome - Villa Médicis in 2012, he won the Ricard Foundation Prize for Contemporary Art in 2016 and the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2018, while his first two feature films were selected and awarded at the Cannes Film Festival - Critics' Week. In 2019, Clément Cogitore's staging of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Indes Galantes at the Opéra National de Paris to mark the 350e anniversary of the Opéra National de Paris brought the artist to the attention of the general public.