Architecture and Exhibition Scenography— Olga de Amaral, Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain Paris, France

Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture has designed the exhibition dedicated to Olga de Amaral at the Fondation Cartier for Contemporary Art. This is a significant event, not only for the artist but also for the institution itself. It is the last show to be organized in the iconic building designed by Jean Nouvel before the Fondation moves to a new location. 

In designing the exhibition, Lina Ghotmeh thought about space — both the space of Amaral’s works and that of Jean Nouvel’s building. How could the relationship between them be elevated? Lina Ghotmeh used architecture as a tool. The aim was to evoke an emotion in visitors, to create a timeless moment, and to immerse them in the atmosphere and memory of the works with the fewest possible elements and devices. To achieve this, Lina Ghotmeh worked precisely to position the works in the space. Their installation, either flush with the ground or suspended, evokes their origin, generates a narrative, and recounts the artist’s inspirations. 

Before working on Amaral’s exhibition, Lina Ghotmeh had visited a slate quarry in the French Pyrenees, where she came across enormous black boulders, covered in snow at the time. These stones are magnificent — both massive and fragile, black as the depth of time, chipped like the strata of the Earth. 

Discovering the Colombian landscapes that so inspired Amaral, Lina Ghotmeh thought of these stones again. The transparency of the ground floor of the Fondation Cartier, encircled by the garden, evokes the landscape. This gave rise to the idea of creating a landscape of slate stones in the main hall, creating a dialogue between the interior, exterior, and Amaral’s works, as if they were in the Páramo de las Moyas, a nature reserve in Bogotá’s eastern hills. Amaral often photographed her works in nature, and it was the photograph of Hojarascablanca y seca draped over boulders that inspired the spirit of this first exhibition space. 

In the second space on the ground floor, the Brumas create an ethereal and floating environment. Lina Ghotmeh wanted to tell the story of these works as a powerful colored cloud, a variegated rain, light and evanescent, that spreads over the glass walls of the Fondation Cartier with a reflection on the landscape of the garden outside. 

As Lina Ghotmeh went down into the lower space, she immediately wanted to rethink what a basement could be, to move away from reading this space as a secondary area. Lina Ghotmeh thought of it more as the space of the unconscious — an embryonic, circular space that is enveloping and protective. Her inspiration was drawn from the spiral motif found in some of Amaral’s pieces. She was reminded of her childhood in Beirut: they often went into the basement to escape the bombardments. It was a space for the imaginary, for play, a place to protect oneself. From the gloom, light emerges. In the first basement space, Amaral’s luminous works surface. They do not need walls; they create space and define the visitor’s path, leading them to the next room, where the Estelas, like the remains and megaliths of the San Agustín archaeological park in Colombia, invite contemplation and meditation.