Ha za vu zu's Residency at Frac des Pays de la Loire

The Turkish artist collective Ha za vu zu, virtually unknown in France before their appearance at the 2009 Lyon Biennale, were invited by curator Vasif Kortun to the 23rd Ateliers Internationaux at Frac des Pays de la Loire in Carquefou. From November 6, 2009, to January 31, 2010, the five artists set up camp in the workshops and later in the Jean-François Taddéi room. The exhibition consisted of traces of their stay, focusing on action and the production of objects, sounds, and events. They rejected hierarchy and specialization, embodying a philosophy of the act, the effective, and the absolute present. Their works included marking the lawn with the trace of an airplane, creating an improbable object from a textile envelope stretched by two cars, and a concert during the opening whose remnants—cardboard and protective tarps soaked in paint—were assembled in the exhibition. Dozens of small paintings on tarpaulin squares, made in series but by hand, were hung on a wall, available for purchase as sleeves containing the group's latest album recorded live at the opening. A monumental mural reproducing a passport pattern, centered with a cement head of a melancholic animal, added a poignant note. The exhibition conveyed a sense of order, instinctively pictorial, and a transition from energetic presence to a slight, sad unease after the party ended.