Stéphanie Roland
Phantom Islands - Installation - 2020
presented as part of the exhibition Panorama 22
Installation
A phantom island is an island whose existence was mentioned in atlases for a certain period but then withdrawn because it has proven that it did not exist. Many causes can explains these geographical fictions: geopolitical and economic interests, copyrights, mirages, optical illusions, human error, memes, hoaxes, legends, etc.
After carrying out her research, Stéphanie Roland reconstituted the contours of ghost islands, giving them permanent form in marble, bringing a more extensive temporality and materiality to these ephemeral entities from the western world.
Alongside these, a film presents Podesta Island, one of the last phantom islands on Google Earth at the current time.
Over the last hundred years, numerous sources have contradicted each other regarding its existence and, despite their advanced level of technology, geographical institutions do not all have the same answer to this question. This hybrid film, a cross between documentary and fiction, explores the narratives generated by this island, comparing the different sources in order to restore a complex, fragmented reality. What is the right approach to an event in the Post-Truth age? In world that is hyperconnected and exhaustively mapped, are there still unknown lands?
Stéphanie Roland
Stéphanie Roland is a Belgian-Micronesian visual artist based in Brussels who regularly exhibits her work internationally. Her projects have been presented in major institutions such as the Louvre, the Benaki Museum, Bozar, MIT, Le Botanique, MOPLA and Wiels, and at the Kampala International Biennale of Art. In 2017 she took part in the group show at the Antarctica Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, where she presented her film Deception Island in world première. Her films have been selected for international festivals including the Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin, Venice and FID Marseille.
Production
Partners
Acknowledgments
Conservatoire du Littoral, municipality of Bray-Dunes, Camping du Perroquet, Institut Géographique National (Belgium). Luc-Jérôme Bailleul, Estelle Benazet, François Bonenfant, Aurélie Brouet, David Chantreau, Daniel Dobbels, Siobhán Donoghue, Felipe Esperza, Claire and Philippe Goffe, Nicolas Goffe, Nicolas Gourault, Marie-Christine Hubinont, François Lescieux, Samuel Lecocq, Pierre Le Lay, Kendra Mclaughlin, Barbara Merlier, Matías Piñeiro, Cyprien Quairiat, Enrique Ramirez, Ines Sieulle, Blandine Tourneux, Madeleine Van Doren, Claire Williams and all my comrades at Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains.
