SONJÉ
SONJÉ
DAVID GUMBS
Virtual Reality – 2024
About the artwork
Sonjé is a VR experience which denounces the environmental contamination of the French West Indies by the Chlordecone molecule. This insecticide was used intensively by the Békés from 1972 to 1993 to save the banana industry. It results in the poisoning of the population. Indeed, Martinique and Guadeloupe hold the world record for cancers each year.
The chlordecone molecule is indestructible and takes between 500 and 700 years to leave the ground. This means centuries of contamination of terrestrial and marine flora. The disastrous consequences are : Contamination of the food industry, groundwater, rivers, and islands fishing coasts.
Sonjé then asks the question : what will happen to the population, the fauna and flora of the French West Indies in 700 years ? To answer this, the artist immerses the viewer in a futuristic, semi-submerged banana plantation having undergone irreversible mutations and transformations.
The creative process
This creation was nourished by the current militant atmosphere in Martinique, around the various trials and compensation requests made to the Békés and to the French State by union representatives defending the rights of agricultural workers. The writing of the script was made possible thanks to interviews with workers, and photographic surveys in banana fields. In order to be as faithful as possible to the testimonies.
About the artist
David Gumbs is an award-winning multimedia artist from the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean, now based in Martinique. He holds a specialized Master’s degree in New Media from ENSCI Les Ateliers in Paris.
His recent projects include his nomination to the Mondes Nouveaux project by the French Ministry of Culture, his first solo exhibition in the United States, “From Dust to Gold,” at the Telfair Museums in Savannah, as well as Illuminate Coral Gables in Miami, Tod Town Expo in Shanghai, the Currents New Media digital festival in Santa Fe, and Relational Undercurrents, a major retrospective of Latin American and Caribbean art in the United States. The exhibition began at MOLAA Los Angeles and traveled to the Portland Museum of Art, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, and the Wallach Gallery in New York in 2018. Learn more
