"Learn to dream with one eye open."
Every one of Gregory Colbert’s photographs captures a moment that happened.
The cynical eye is trained to assume trickery in images such as these, is resistant to the idea that they could represent the actual and the possible, but these images owe nothing to Photoshop, photo manipulation, montage, artificial lighting, or special effects.
He has taken the medium of the instantaneous and turned it into something slow, expansive, epic. You could be looking at a moment that occurred yesterday, or three hundred years ago. The effect is uncanny. You feel as if you are in the presence of a dream, a myth, a fairy tale.
Ever since I first learned about Gregory Colbert's Nomadic Museum, I have wanted to visit it. The first stop was Pier 54, in New York from March until June of 2005. Over 2 years later, I can no longer recall what precluded me from attending an event so close, in a city I visit fairly often, for an artist whose work I've been absolutely yearning to see in person. These sentiments would need to be echoed when I had to cancel a trip to LA, where I thought I would get to see the exhibit on the Santa Monica Pier, where Mr. Colbert and the divinity of his works laid stateside from January through May of 2006. Between April and July of this year alone, I have been to LA 4 times - what was so important that I couldn't get out there once in a 5 month time-span in 2006?
So, this year, the exhibit was scheduled to close in Tokyo on June 24th. I had been planning a trip to Thailand and normally stop in Japan. This year proved to be the exception. Due to last minute planning, and the other countries on my itinerary - I could not find any flights that would get me to Tokyo before the exhibit closed, afterward - yes, before - no. I have been checking the site to see where I might be able to see it, or if the opportunity is lost.
Why do I care so much about seeing this artwork and visiting the Nomadic Museum?
Photographer Gregory Colbert—who travels the world taking pictures of people communing with whales, elephants, and other animals— got the idea (and funds) for the museum after his one-man installation in 2002 at the Venice Biennale’s Arsenale, a vast shipyard dating from the Renaissance. “Ashes and Snow” was the first solo exhibit ever to occupy the entire space. And every last piece of art in it was bought up by the chairman of Rolex, who then encouraged the artist to use the money to mount the show—as is—in other cities. So, Colbert asked the avant-garde Japanese architect Shigeru Ban to design a museum large enough to travel with it.
Known for his clever use of paper and recycled materials, Ban also designed a Pompidou spin-off in Metz, France. For the Nomadic Museum, 148 empty containers are stacked in a self-supporting grid. Fourteen containers are used to ship building materials; the remaining ones are rounded up at the museum’s next port of call. A tent-like fabric fills in the gaps between the containers and serves as the roof.
The interior of the museum has no natural light. The installation is a three-part experience. In addition to 100 images, the show includes a “floating library,” in which pages from an epistolary novel Colbert has written is projected on screens. At the end is a film—narrated by Laurence Fishburne—showing people dancing with elephants and other cross-species encounters.
As for the art itself, Colbert displays thirteen years and 33 expeditions (Burma, India, the waters off Tonga), where he has assembled what he calls “a loving exploration into the nature of animals in their natural habitat as they interact with human beings.” The people in his work include Burmese monks, trance dancers, and, of course, himself.
Colbert’s 2002 show at the Arsenale was attended by 100,000 people. As Colbert once said, “It’s not just a museum...It’s a full experience.”
In my pilgrimage to find this place, I am hoping that when the Nomadic Museum opens it doors in Mexico City in early 2008, I will be standing there, smile on my face, giddy as a school girl.
