Clément Verger
Photographer
July-August 2024
- Visual Arts
“It is these particular stretches of time between destinations that I hope to inhabit during this Atlantic-Pacific Artists Line residency, as I combine my photography with writing, drawing, and crafting within a folk art tradition.”
Clément Verger is a French artist-researcher whose work questions the apparent naturalness of the landscapes that surround us in the Anthropocene era, blending artistic production with scientific protocols in a research-driven approach. His projects are conceived as tools for analyzing the complex ramifications of human influence on the environment.
Launched in 2016, Circumnavigations is a long-term, three-part body of work that examines the impact of Captain James Cook’s voyages on the global landscape. Each of his three expeditions serves as the basis for case studies on the transportation and establishment of plant species across the world.
After studying visual communication at ENSAAMA Olivier de Serres, Clément Verger was awarded the prestigious Leonardo da Vinci international scholarship. In 2011, he earned a Master’s degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Westminster in London. He was a laureate of the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2018 and received the CNAP creation grant the same year. Clément Verger was a member of the French Academy in Madrid, Casa de Velázquez, for 2018-2019, and in 2020, he was awarded the CIPGP print prize from the Florence and Damien Bachelot collection. In 2021, he received further support from CNAP for his Circumnavigations project.
His work is held in numerous private collections, as well as in the collections of the Casa de Velázquez, FRAC Picardie, Frac Sud, BNF, Bachelot Collection, CIPGP, and CNAP. Since 2021, he has had the honor of being the first recipient of the doctoral contract through the project initiated by the Casa de Velázquez. His Circumnavigations project is being developed from 2021 to 2025 in collaboration with Université Paris-Saclay and the CHCSC cultural history laboratory.
The project presented here is part of Circumnavigations, a three-part body of work initiated in 2016. Circumnavigations explores the influence of Captain James Cook’s voyages on the global landscape. Each of his three expeditions serves as the basis for case studies on the transportation and establishment of species around the world. Over the years, this project has taken me from the eucalyptus plantations of Portugal and Galicia to the east coast of Australia, Norfolk Island, Tasmania, and Bruny Island. These journeys, however, have not offered the unique opportunity presented by The Atlantic-Pacific Line residency: a voyage at sea, and the chance to experience this time between ports of call— a concept I have encountered so often in my readings and research.
It is this in-between time that I wish to immerse myself in during this residency, combining my photographic practice with writing, drawing, and object-making in the folk-art tradition. One object/plant in particular, which I’ve been studying for several years, seems to weave connections between the peoples and territories that have inhabited this part of the world since Polynesian navigators first introduced it: the gourd. This “world plant” would serve as the medium for contemporary scrimshaws, where the scenes depicted would no longer focus on whale hunts, but instead reflect on three periods of maritime transport— from the 21st century to traditional Polynesian navigation, and back to the voyages of exploration in the 18th century.
My interest in this residency is particularly focused on the Pacific leg of the journey, which will connect Papeete to Savannah, passing through New Caledonia, the east coast of Australia, and New Zealand, before crossing the Panama Canal.
Retracing these 21st-century trade routes, which mirror those established by James Cook, who was himself preceded by Polynesian navigators, would provide a unique opportunity to complete the final phase of this project that I have been pursuing for the past eight years.
Taking advantage of the time between ports of call would fill the missing link in Circumnavigations, creating an experience that would weave together the work I have developed in these regions, the cultures that inhabit them, and the plants that thrive there.