Hervé Di Rosa

Just as a ring is designed for a diamond, so a reliquary is built to highlight what is sacred. The artist felt that there was a family resemblance between his works and the folk art objects at the Mucem.

Three sculpted panels by Hervé Di Rosa, created in the Amadoua highlands of the Noun region (western Cameroon), stand alongside a fish-shaped merry-go-round. At the other end of the room, a ladder made of ox yokes collected in the French regions by the museum’s ethnographers seems to escape (or give wings?) to a resin cow painted by the artist. A long hunting rifle (3.70m!), once used for waterfowl, is presented amid a myriad of wooden birds, carved years ago by Marius Di Rosa. This collection of hunting decoys is all the more important as it is undoubtedly a founding element in the artist’s career: his father, an SNCF employee, spent much of his spare time carving and coloring decoys for duck hunting. From an early age, Hervé Di Rosa watched his father work wood, sculpting and painting it. These sculptures were not destined for the museum: created on the kitchen table, they were displayed on the water, in the ponds.

To present the beautiful and patient work of embedding Hervé Di Rosa’s custom-made works in the Mucem collections, an inventive and joyful itinerary was needed. Artistic director Jean Seisser, a long-standing accomplice of Hervé Di Rosa, imagined the exhibition as an archipelago made up of some fifteen islets. Each of these islands brings together some of the objects in the Mucem collections with a creation by Hervé Di Rosa. Each island tells its own story, freely interpretable by the visitor.

Curious about everything and driven by a strong desire to travel the world, immediately after graduating from high school he enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris). Wherever and whenever he goes, Hervé Di Rosa works with local artisans. Those who, throughout the world, know how to update their know-how with each new generation, to create works for the places where they appear, and the people who live there.
A large painting on canvas depicts the “Marseillais”, and their portraits also form the backdrop for the suspended claustras that punctuate the exhibition.

Art Direction

Jean Seisser, art critic

Police station

Vincent Giovannoni, Chief Curator, Head of the Performing Arts Department, Mucem

Scenography

Gabrielle Laurin Mercury and Studio Mash