Amarrer à l’ombre

Based on a project specially designed for the citadel of Port Louis, Gabrielle Manglou has taken over the powder magazine space. This exhibition is the result of her research and creative work carried out during a two-month residency at the citadel.

The history linking Port Louis to the island of Réunion, where Gabrielle Manglou is from, serves as the backdrop for her research: in the 17th and 18th centuries, many Port Louis residents boarded ships belonging to the East India Company and stopped off at Réunion. Some of them even settled permanently on this island, where French ships en route to the Far East would stop to resupply. Naval explorations, conquests of new territories, colonial history: the artist focuses on the unexpected links between Port Louis and Réunion. She gives voice to the stories of objects that are lost in the fabric of history, which she calls the ‘silent witnesses’ of culture.

The title of the exhibition, Amarrer à l'ombre (Mooring in the Shade), is an explicit reference to nautical terminology and the citadel's maritime vocation. In Réunion Creole, this expression refers to the notion of attachment. It is linked to Gabrielle Manglou's artistic practice, which proceeds in a rhizome-like manner — a structure in constant evolution, in all directions and without hierarchy — seeking to bring together seemingly distant objects and organise them into systems of associations.

The artist invites us to a ‘poetic mooring’, where shadows – whether the protective shade of Réunion's tropical climate or that of the citadel's high ramparts – play on their opposition to light, a metaphor for the visible and the invisible. Folding and unfolding, covering and revealing, digging and filling, implying and explaining, sewing and unravelling, uniting and detaching are all gestures that echo in the artist's visual repertoire. The installation, designed for the citadel's powder magazine, condenses his artistic gesture into a set of heterogeneous forms in which each work is illuminated by its connection to those around it. The objects, forms and assemblages interact on platforms, like floating islands in space. Landmark objects, such as the grid pattern of the platforms, represent markers that allow us to find our way around this new vocabulary. Ropes and fasteners symbolise universal objects whose primary function is to bring things together. They are reference objects, like shells that have survived across eras and cultures: the first currencies of exchange, but also tangible signs of prosperity and power.

In this journey, Gabrielle Manglou, drawing inspiration from the shared past of Port Louis and Reunion Island, invites us to discover a unique cartography. She opens up new avenues and untangles the invisible threads of history where ‘we sense that we are following a trail’.