Blog | HPRG See Mehmet Ali Uysal’s immersive installation at the Bon Marché until 20th February 2022 – Hotels Paris Rive Gauche Blog

See Mehmet Ali Uysal’s immersive installation at the Bon Marché until 20th February 2022

Once a year, the most chic department store in Paris, the Bon Marché (close to our hotels) invites an artist to create an installation in the building’s amazing spaces.

This year it’s the turn of Turkish artist Mehmet Ali Uysal, who has created two giant icebergs suspended from the glass ceilings, and placed a white boat 17 metres long by 8 metres wide in a room on the second floor, both of which are aimed at making us reflect on global warming…

The Bon Marché’s carte blanche is a stunning one this year – right in the middle of the store you’ll see two giant icebergs, seen from an underwater perspective (the installation is actually called Su, ‘water’ in Turkish).

Pretty much filling the space under the store’s two glass ceilings, the installation also extends towards the exterior, with water effects in the window displays as if the entire building were filling with water.

Installation immersive de Mehmet Ali Uysal au Bon Marché jusqu'au 20 février 2022
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Upstairs, the artist has constructed a large white boat (in the form of one you would make out of folded paper) and there are guided visits for kids conducted by the artist and a storyteller, helping them to grasp the seriousness of of the current ecological situation.

Like a sort of Noah’s Ark, the bateau symbolises the hope of tomorrow’s world, saved from the rising water…

Installation immersive de Mehmet Ali Uysal au Bon Marché jusqu'au 20 février 2022
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If you want to learn more about how the artist went about creating these pieces (and you speak a little French), the short video below has lots of info from Uysal himself. A written interview can also be read here.

And feel free to check out his Instagram!

On 20th January (10€ – click here to book), Uysal will be talking to Benjamin Dutreux form the non-profit organisation Water Family which tells kids about how and why we should protect the world’s water. They’ll be chatting about their mutual fascination for water and global warming, aided by Laurent Goumarre, a journalist and radio producer specialised in the arts.

Installation immersive de Mehmet Ali Uysal au Bon Marché jusqu'au 20 février 2022

And a catalogue has just been published to accompany the exhibition. In both French and English, it’s available for 25€ at the Bon Marché’s bookstore on the second étage.

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The immersive installation ‘Su’ by Mehmet Ali Uysal is at the Bon Marché (here) until 20th February 2022

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