Featured image above: “Until the End of Time”, by Yves Étienne Sonolet
Yves Etienne Sonolet is a French visual artist working with video and installation. He has settled in Macau since 2008. In his work, he has a strong interest in questioning cultural identity and dissecting the urban environment, which he expresses through exhibitions, multimedia creations, and adapting video for stage productions.
In Macau, in the most densely populated region of the world, in which Yves has become a resident for 12 years, we are discovering our historical center without crowds once again due to the closedown of the borders from tourists. In the artwork “Possible Paths”, Yves has created an interactive video installation in which as the audience approaches the screen, the people in the video disappear gradually, leaving St Paul’s Ruins standing still, almost 400 years after being built.
Yves has a wide range of interests. Be it in sociology, politics, culture, technology, history, and certainly, in art, his enthusiasm to think critically seems to be indefatigable. As an artist, Yves has a remarkable talent to the imaginative and the humorous, based on which he takes his creative pleasure by means of “appropriation” and “détournement” of usually somewhat boring everyday objects, such as turning empty packs of cigarettes into a Karaoke singing machine.
“As we observe in his work “Until the End of Time”, the women featured on the warning messages of the cigarette packs opening their mouths to sing “Love me Tender”, we are introduced into a strange process of communication in which no certainty or conclusion is to be drawn. Rather, it is the questioning that confirms.”, the curator says.
When: July 31–August 28, 2020
Where: AFA, 4F Art Garden, 265 Avenida Dr. Rodrigo Rodrigues, Macau
How much: Free admission
For more information, check their Facebook page
