Emilie Ding

The starting-point is a context, as so often in the work of Emilie Ding. A context she examines, annotates and turns over, like a glove, scrutinizing the creaking parts and sticking points. In museum spaces with her monumental sculptures or in site-specific installations, Emilie Ding brings an oblique gaze to bear on the space, its functions and architecture.

From her examination of the pandemic times we live in, she retains the Hippocratic formula Cito, Longe, Tarde: go quickly, go far, come back slowly. This age-old maxim was made popular in his day by Auger Ferrier, a scholar and doctor in Toulouse, who published a treatise on prophylactic and curative remedies for the plague in 1558. Fear, plague, flight. Dispersion, prohibition. Emilie Ding turns the saying into "Come early, stay late, go slowly." An invitation to party as a space of resistance, with parties banned as one of the prohibited activities considered dangerous. Parties which, as we all know, whether they be spontaneous or regulated, inopportune or commercialized, are also hives of possibilities, constructing labile, uncontrollable and sometimes transgressive communities, inciting bodies to move, to let go.

So, what better choice than a school dedicated to young people — isdaT, henceforth adorned with the maxim — to reiterate the constraints inflicted on this space of freedom. Signaling prohibition as well as frustration, a ghostly party can be seen, as inaccessible as a mirage, with its colorful, cadenced lights. While, elsewhere, like a viral effusion that it exudes, signs around the city indicate festive spaces that are now inaccessible.

With the support of Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture