"The human being no longer sees himself at the center, deciding and measuring all things, imposing his will on an inert nature. The work emerges from a symphony that is both human and non-human." It is in these terms that Guillaume Logé explains the emerging concept of "symbiotic perspective", which he sees as breaking with the linear anthropocentric perspective inherited from the Renaissance. A concept developed in a book ¹ and an exhibition featuring some twenty artists working with living matter, including Michel Blazy, Clément Borderie, Edith Dekyndt, Tomás Saraceno and Yang Zhichao. It's the latter's work, the result of a performance, that we've chosen to highlight. What could be more eloquent than the vision of a back bristling with two shoots of grass?

The artist's body, having been surgically grafted with the two cuttings, is here visibly in pain ("as we can assume the plant is") "and ends up rejecting the grafts", explains the exhibition curator, underlining the importance of the work in signifying the impossibility of hybridization based on "the goodwill of an all-powerful human" and the impasse represented by such an ecological vision: "The living is not malleable at will". Here, the dream of symbiosis turns into a nightmare... A mutant of illusory biopower, Yang Zhichao invites us to show integrity, and warns us against the temptation of an overly artificial transgression of the animal/plant kingdoms.

STÉPHANIE DULOUT