On Traces and Tides

IEPA#1 at Basis Frankfurt

During her three-month artist residency in Hendaye, Lilly Lulay studied the landscape of the coastal area formed by deposits and erosion. Yet this Atlantic region has not only been shaped by weather and tides, it also bears older and more recent traces of human intervention. The territory that once served Antoine d’Abbadie as landholdings and a place for research, later becoming an occupied war zone, is nowadays a nature reserve inviting tourists to contemplate and stroll through nature. In her works Lulay investigates how natural and cultural processes within the site constantly shift, overlay and influence each other. 

For Quand la mer monte and Sundowner @ The Beach, Lulay makes use of materials found in the bays nearby. They are marked by organic depos its and show nature’s forces continually change and shape the environment. These found materials are combined with elements of discarded electronic devices as computer monitors from the local junkyard. By taking these pieces apart and recombining them, Lulay continues her research on the subject of layering and stratification and transforms the functionless image carriers into presentation areas or reflecting surfaces within her works. 

They Were Here involves large format photo collages printed on silk, neoprene, and acrylic fabrics. Here, Lulay engages with traces and relics of various cultures and epochs, as she combines interior and exterior photographs of the Château-Observatoire Abbadia and graffiti created by adolescents in empty bunkers that date from the German occupation. Letters and initials, floral ornaments and geometrical patterns from various eras and (sub)cultures blend in these semi-transparent, flag-like sculptures. Time-specific usages of the two architectural structures, but also the culturally conditioned superimpositions of these historical sites, are deconstructed and brought into new relations with each other. This layering continues in a partly overlapping hanging of the semi-transparent fabric prints. 

Traces of human intervention and modification, natural procedures and changes in how the area is used - Lulay investigates all of these processes in her multilayered works. By combining manufactured and natural deposits, imprints and patterns that date from different eras, Lulay reflects the mutual interpenetration and influence of environmental and cultural factors occurring as a continual process.

Christin Müller