Initially created in the form of an installation in the Atacama Desert in Chile, Animitas pays homage to memorial altars. Filmed in a single static shot from sunrise to sunset, with a ground-level view of an expanse of fresh flowers, the work captures the sound of 800 small Japanese bells, chiming in the wind. Fixed to the ground, they reproduce the map of the stars on the night Boltanski was born. Their chimes evoke the “music of the stars and the voice of floating souls”. The same installation was created on the Japanese island of Teshima (La Forêt des murmures, 2016), on the island of Orléans in Quebec (Blanc, 2017) and near the Dead Sea (2017). A major figure on the international art scene, Boltanski has been weaving true and fictional stories together since the 1970s, inspired by individual and collective histories. The theme of memory, the obsession with not allowing people to forget, and the ability to revisit myths are central to his approach.

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