Exhibit: “Okinawa !!” by Victoire Thierrée [KG+]

Based on research and on-site photographic exploration, the artist documents the military territories that remain present today and the surrounding natural environment, while highlighting the use of botany by the U.S. Department of War through an herbarium collected in the Ryūkyū archipelago as early as 1951.

Victoire Thierrée discovered the island of Okinawa through the work of photographer Shōmei Tōmatsu (1930–2012) during her first visit to Japan in 2012. Tōmatsu was the first to document the American military presence in Okinawa, resulting in a 1969 publication, Okinawa, Okinawa, Okinawa, a title to which this photographic series directly refers—like a cry.

In 2019, Victoire Thierrée explored this territory, where thirty-one U.S. military bases and the GIs they house still remain. She produced a series of black-and-white photographs focusing on the peripheries of these bases, where the majestic natural environment seems to resist this occupation.

In 2023, she traveled to the archives of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to conduct research on botanist Egbert H. Walker (1899–1991), who led a major postwar project in the Ryūkyū Islands. More than five thousand plant specimens were collected to create herbaria, from which Victoire Thierrée selected forty plates based on her research into the battles that took place on the island. She then photographed these in the botanical archives of the Smithsonian Institution.

The gelatin silver prints featured in the exhibition were produced by the artist in Kyoto at the historic workshops of Benrido, internationally renowned for their expertise in the collotype technique.

Organisation : Institut français du Kansai
Co-organisation : Villa Kujoyama
Partenaires : Fondation Bettencourt Schueller, atelier Benrido, CNAP, Fondation des artistes