Emmanuel Henninger
Contemporary drawing
The starting point is walking. I move across territories, here and farther away—territories that call out to me. There is this notion of crossing: from one territory to another, from one border to the next, from undergrowth to a no man’s land. I am drawn to this process—from the collection of visual fragments through the photographic medium on the one hand, to their transcription, line by line onto paper, on the other.
My iconographic choices are part of a broader engagement with living systems and endangered ancient ecosystems. This approach leads me to travel to sites marked by tension. I move mainly across France and Germany, meeting activist, associative, and artistic communities. Immersing myself in fragile territories and absorbing messages of activism and environmental concern enables me to translate this accumulation of landscape fragments into graphic form.
From this immersion in the landscape emerge drawings as well as panoramas, most of them site-specific, all presenting a dichotomy between two worlds: representations of minimally anthropized nature contrasted with others where the extraction of raw materials is omnipresent. In my practice, the notion of landscape operates under multiple regimes. I seek to inscribe socio-political aspirations within it, revealing contemporary issues related to natural resources and their exploitation, inherited landscapes, transformed terrains, and newly formed environments.
I conceive of landscape as a witness to human activity. Through this stubbornly blind grammar, I attempt to render perceptible the tipping point—the inevitable, the vertigo, or the erasure.
Landscape is the reflection of our society, and within this context, my aim is to question humanity’s geological imprint in the present and the future of the planet, and to propose a visual representation of it.
Today, the major forests that protect our planet from global warming and shelter countless animal and plant species are being destroyed to make way for ecocidal industries. More precisely, to sustain our modern Western way of life, we create spaces of non-life. Through drawing, I aim to make perceptible the impacts of humanity on its natural environment. The landscapes I have crossed are, by definition, destined to disappear. From this accumulation of visual data, I attempt to reconfigure a space—our own—the one we are losing.
Career
2004: Master’s degree in Visual Arts, Université Marc Bloch, Strasbourg
2007: Master’s degree in Law and Social Sciences, Project Engineering in the Social and Solidarity Economy, Université de Haute-Alsace, Mulhouse
Artistic Residencies
2021: Yerevan – Armenia (July–December 2021, Atelier Mondial)
2020: Finalist for the CEAAC Strasbourg residency (Frankfurt)
Exhibitions
2021: CEAAC (Centre Européen d’Actions Artistiques Contemporaines), Strasbourg (FR), Des herbes folles, curated by Viktoria von den Brüggen
2021: T66 Kulturwerk, Freiburg im Breisgau (DE), Regionale 21, curated by Chris Popovic, Helge Emmaneel, Alfonso Lipardi
2021: La Filature – Scène Nationale, Mulhouse (FR), as part of MULHOUSE 021, Biennale of Emerging Contemporary Art / Cancelled (Covid)
2020: Fondation François Schneider, Wattwiller (FR), Botanica, curated by Marc Thébault / Cancelled (Covid)
2020: Module76, Mulhouse (FR)
2020: Kunstscheune, Freiburg im Breisgau (DE)
2019: Kunstscheune, Freiburg im Breisgau (DE)
2019: Artloft Galerie, Morges (CH), invited by the Association of Museums of the Historic Center of Morges
2019: Cour des Chaînes, Mulhouse (FR), Paysages modulaires
2018: CINE du Moulin, Lutterbach (FR)
Educational Workshops
2021: La Filature / Scène Nationale – Canopé, Middle Schools of Dannemarie and Colmar
2020: OUNG CARITAS Berlin in partnership with Les Cigales Mulhouse
Publications / Artist Books / Editions
2021: Arterritoires / Marie Czapska (limited edition)
2021: Projekt Klimaschutz. Was jetzt geschehen muss, um noch die Kurve zu kriegen / Anja Paumen – Oekom Edition
2021: Des herbes folles, exhibition catalogue / Viktoria von den Brüggen
2021: La forêt, les mines et l’obstination du dessin / Hélène Cascaro
2017: Nunatak (Journal of mountain histories, cultures, and struggles)
