We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2021 50cc Air de Normandie creation and production grant.
Following a collective review of the applications received, the jury unanimously selected the project Soulever la poussière, submitted by photographer Coline Jourdan.
Building on her series Les noirceurs du fleuve rouge (2019), which focused on the Rio Tinto basin (Spain) polluted by mining activity, Coline Jourdan continues her exploration of the presence of toxins in our everyday environment and their often imperceptible impacts. At the crossroads of fieldwork and laboratory research, the artist develops a photographic approach blending documentary, scientific reporting and visual experimentation.
Launched in 2020 during the 1+2 residency in Toulouse, the project Soulever la poussière is set in the former gold and arsenic mine at Salsigne, located in the Orbiel Valley in the Aude department. Drawing on research by a group of scientists from the Toulouse Geosciences and Environment Laboratory (GET), Coline Jourdan presents and explores the effects of mining extractivism on a region that was once home to Europe’s largest gold mine and the world’s largest arsenic mine. Although mining is no longer an active industry today, the mine still shapes the landscape.
Through her photographic investigation and in dialogue with the scientists assessing the valley’s contamination, Coline Jourdan regularly explores these landscapes during sampling campaigns, searching for clues. She meets former miners and whistleblowers, then turns to archive images to bring to light what is no longer there. To convey the impact of human activity on the environment, Coline Jourdan favours a multiplicity of perspectives and initiates a dialogue between photographic images, collected materials, scientific data and, soon, archives.
Coline Jourdan, born in 1993, lives and works in Rouen. She is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure d’art de Dijon. Her work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions: Festival La Gacilly, Baden, Austria, 2021; Artefacts (Résidence 1+2), Chapelle des Cordeliers, Toulouse, 2020; Les noirceurs du fleuve rouge, Galerie Full B1, Rouen, 2019.
