Marguerite Humeau's 'Oscillations' at Museion Bolzano

Marguerite Humeau's first solo museum exhibition in Italy, 'Oscillations,' opened at Museion in Bolzano in 2019. The show is the final chapter of a long-term project that previously traveled to the New Museum in New York ('Birth Canal', 2018) and the Kunstverein in Hamburg ('Ecstasies', 2019). The exhibition transforms the museum space into a cave-like environment where visitors encounter sculptures, sound, and drawings. The first work, 'Venere di Kostenki,' depicts a 35-year-old woman who has ingested a marmoset brain, entering a trance state and transforming into a spirit. Humeau recorded ten women breathing and vocalizing to produce sounds of transformation into natural elements. The installation responds to Museion's architecture: colored light enters through a stained-glass window depicting a micro-biological brain event, while natural light comes from the opposite side, creating a transitional space between the human and spirit worlds. The exhibition draws on the book 'The Shamans of Prehistory' by Clottes and Williams, suggesting prehistoric caves were used for shamanic practices. The sculptures and space lose scale, making it impossible to determine whether the figures are life-size or miniature.