Fragments of the Human nature

“Fragments of the Human nature” is a series of sculptures that aims at helping us figure out what defines us as Humans.

Culture, language, creativity, sociability are all defining factors of the Human experience. These factors are partly the result of our evolution as a species, specifically our brain. Human nature is therefore a mix of nature and nurture. On a biological level, the human race is continuously evolving along other species, apes included. Hence, according to philosopher Jean-Marie Schaeffer : “Man is the provisional and unstable genealogical crystallization of an evolving form of life.”

I wanted to show Human nature as fragments of Human bodies. These sculptures were created using oxidized steel meant to represent flesh marked by life ordeals. The plants growing inside these fragmented bodies represent culture : it has to be cultivated, fed and nurtured.

These sculptures question our awareness of our own Human nature. Furthermore, I believe some beliefs to be toxic such as those leading to anthropocentrism : man as the center of all.

In the words of Claude Lévi-Strauss in Anthropologie Structurale, 1973 : “We began by cutting man off from nature and by establishing nature as a sovereign kingdom ; however man is above all a living being. By forgetting this, we gave free rein to all abuses. Western man separated humanity from animality, by granting to one all that he refused to the other, he was opening a cursed circle, and which the same frontier, constantly pushed back, would serve to remove men from other men; and to claim for the benefit of ever smaller minorities the privilege of a corrupt humanism, as soon as it was born for having borrowed its principle and its notion from self-love.”