Mossi Traoré, fashion too

The catalog for the exhibition of the same name offers readers a contemporary and multifaceted perspective on motherhood in the Mediterranean, blending cultural representations with a historical approach and exploring political, social, and artistic issues.

All of the texts and contributions are guided by a single editorial perspective, centered on a central question: Between idealization and emancipation, how do the many facets of motherhood in the Mediterranean reveal the cultural and political issues that mothers embody?
In-depth essays, thematic articles, literary narratives, and poetic inserts will seek to address these questions. The written content will engage in dialogue with reproductions of artworks and iconographic materials drawn from the Mucem’s collections, those of partner institutions, and contemporary art; the collection as a whole aims to tell the stories of motherhood in all its diversity—from the mothers of rappers from “Planet Mars” to mothers who are victims of femicide.

A catalog designed to reflect the exhibition’s exceptionally rich journey.

Co-published by Mucem and Atelier EXB
344 pages
17 x 22 cm
ISBN 978-2-36511-456-1

Kathryn Weir, Hélia Paukner, and Enguerrand Lascols.

Enguerrand Lascols, Hélia Paukner, and Kathryn Weir.

In June 1831, an underwater volcanic eruption between Sicily, Tunisia, and Libya gave rise to a small, barren island made of ash. While sailors and residents of the nearby coasts feared the awakening of a monster, the new territory piqued the curiosity of scientists and the greed of European powers, who sought to claim its strategic position. The competition, however, was short-lived: six months later, the ephemeral island—named “Ferdinandea” by the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies—sank back beneath the waves of the Mediterranean.

A video artist, visual artist, storyteller, and filmmaker, Clément Cogitore draws on this historical and geological phenomenon as the starting point for an empirical work of fiction. Based on historical research and speculative projections, his “Ferdinandea” series chronicles the emergence and disappearance of the volcanic island in a multimedia installation that brings together 16mm films, videos, photographs, and historical documents. The exhibition catalog, designed as an artist’s book, unfolds a visual narrative bordering on the dystopian, inviting the reader on a dreamlike and metaphorical journey. At the heart of the book, an unpublished short story by Tristan Garcia underscores the fictional nature of the work.

This art book, developed in close collaboration between the museum’s curators and editorial team, invites readers to delve into the Mucem’s collections and interpret them in a new light. To highlight the collection’s diversity, three hundred selected items will be presented. Three hundred objects, works of art, or documents—sometimes very distant from one another chronologically and in terms of type—but which share thematic or visual similarities. Their arrangement throughout the book and their juxtaposition on each spread sometimes give rise to playful moments, but above all, to narratives. And each time, they pose questions to the reader: What are their uses? What do they represent? What are they made of? What is a “rat-de-cave”? A “diable de Bessans”? Could it be that an oven and a loft vent share similar shapes? What are a fake beard, an ad for fly swatters, a crystal ball, and a miniature coffin doing in a museum?

Comparisons between objects offer clues; captions serve as keys. It is up to the reader to, in turn, unravel the narrative threads woven from these chain-like associations. For our most curious readers, we’ll reveal that the book’s structure was inspired by an amusing literary device called “concatenaion .” Concatenation is a series of anadiploses—in other words, “a repetition”—where the last word of one sentence is used as the first word of the next. So as not to scare off other readers, we’ll also tell them that it’s simpler than it seems: it’s the same principle as the nursery rhyme “Three Little Kittens.”

Structured in two parts, like the exhibition, the catalog aims to provide an overview of the history of museum collections of antiquities and Mediterranean ethnography, delving deeper into certain exemplary cases through contributions from specialized art historians. This provides a better understanding of the dissemination—and political appropriation—of ancient models, and traces the footsteps of ethnographers in the field… Exclusive interviews with the contemporary artists participating in this project were also conducted.