Solène Kerlo
From May 24 to June 14, 2025

Born from a residency in the Atacama Desert in Chile, SALAR explores the cosmogony of salt flats, vestiges of a vanished ocean, now threatened by intensive lithium extraction. At the crossroads of archaeology, ecology, and myth, this immersive exhibition questions the links between matter and memory, fertility and extinction.

The path opens onto a crystalline cavern, an initiatory space to be traversed to access the exhibition. Suspended garlands of salt form a vibrant mineral vault, while cotton canvases dusted with salt tremble in the slightest breeze. The floor traces a path between white dunes resembling inverted stalagmites. A subdued light, diffused by candles and shards of mirrors, evokes the shimmer of mica. This fragile and luminous salt cave acts as a threshold to another mode of perception, between the subterranean world and celestial revelation.

At the center of the exhibition: ARKAE, a major piece conceived as a mineral monstrance, a fusion between funerary and fertile, containing a salt disc extracted from a Chilean salt flat – a symbol of an ancient memory and a possible renewal.

On the walls, large canvases painted with red ochre extend this exploration. Extracted from volcanic soil, this living material carries within it an ancient memory. Used since prehistoric times to paint caves, ochre embodies an ancestral gesture, a pulse of the earth. Each trace becomes a breath, a mark of the link between humankind and its telluric origins.

By invoking creation myths and archaic symbols, Solène Kerlo reactivates primal gestures through living materials: beeswax, ochre, brass, salt. Her work weaves a dialogue between the sacred and ecology, between the spirituality of materials and cycles of regeneration. SALAR takes shape through a transdisciplinary approach, giving rise to an immersive experience, between intimate perceptions and collective imaginaries. In these times of soil, body, and narrative depletion, SALAR invites us to reconnect with an awareness of the sacred, where nature once again becomes the center and the matrix.