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At the Art Institute of South-East Asia in Singapour , this series Terra Utopia has been displayed within the exhibition XEM – Meta Far-East. It shows how can the perception of the “Far” remain or evolve, from the antique geographical point of view to some more diverse perspectives as the colonization period to the current impact of the climate change.
These photos look like aerial landscapes of unknown coastal territories. Far East Asia was a terra incognita to be discovered. It is related to the concept created by Thomas More in his book Utopia, 1516. From then, discovery of lands was in the purpose to transform them as colonies. Although colonists generally wanted to build better life by settling, the result was often a dystopia for the original inhabitants.
Tesselations patterns on some photos are describing the approximative knowledge one can has when discovering new lands which are inhabited and developped by others cultures represented by colored scripts . Blue color is used for the Arabic language. Orange scripts are representing the sanskrit holly buddhist texts and red yellow signs are related to the Chinese influences.
