Twin Islands resulted from a month-long residency between March and April 2022: the visual artist Sara Bichão at the Creac'h lighthouse (Ouessant, France) and the performer Violaine Lochu at vaga (São Miguel, Azores). Aiming to communicate from a distance and trying to translate their island experience, the artists have produced a body of work that crosses sculpture (with vernacular objects and other personal belongings), video, and performance, using an alphabet of sounds and movements created for the purpose.


Ainsi semble-t-il que même les îles aiment se tenir compagnie.
(Hence, it seems that, after all, islands like to stick together.)

Like shipwrecked women, Sara Bichão and Violaine Lochu live for a period of time separated on two Atlantic islands near European shores. The first, who landed on the island of Ouessant, discovered vernacular materials, local legends, the right to brie3 and isolation, posted in the watchroom of the Créac'h lighthouse, which served as her retreat. The second, landed on the island of São Miguel, in an intrinsically different context, where the swell and winds are more forgiving, and the sea brings back sounds from the depths.

Will they embark on a frantic journey across these island regions, hoping to find each other, like Werner Herzog on the ice road? Will they receive signals from the sea currents? What duality, reciprocity, or common experiences will result from these journeys? Thus, a long-distance communication is launched, awaiting the reunion.

T - Tic tac
W - Whale
I - Ignition
N - Necessary

I - Invert
S - Signal
L - Latitude
A - Antena
N - Noise ?
D - Daboecia Azorica
S - Silence.

It is the environment that initially separates them that ends up connecting them. They are eaten and absorbed by this unpredictable giant organism that is the observed, surveyed, and fantasized space of the sea. From the islands, they look out into the distance. With their heightened senses, they look for each other and cannot keep their eyes riveted on the details of everyday life. Instead, they face the expanding time, listen to the whales, talk to the surrounding plants, become familiar with the language of the sea, and approach the spatialization above and below the horizon.

As if caught up in this time and space that seems to stretch endlessly before their eyes, Violaine Lochu and Sara Bichão return with singular experiments and a collection of sounds, signs, and forms that they communicate to us through fabulous objects. From silence, sculptures with raw forms and instinctive manufacturing are born. This set of objects produced by Sara is then activated by Violaine, who, through a vocal and choreographic composition, transmits notes from the sea bed to us. Wearing the suit created in the Créac'h watch room and bearing the writings of an oracle that has come down to us, this human being does its double reading of this experience.

Ann Stouvenel