Dancing at the Edge of Memory

Experimenter presents Dancing at the Edge of Memory, Julien Segard’s first solo exhibition at Experimenter – Colaba, Mumbai and fifth solo with the gallery. The exhibition presents new drawings and sculpture. This body of work originates from the backdrop of Segard’s childhood and teenage years: the landscape surrounding his home, the Étang-de-Berre near Marseille in the south of France. The work began over twenty years ago in a documentary vein. Now working far from the physicality of this terrain, in his studio in Goa, Segard relies on memory to reassemble fragments of his experiences. “The territory, as it unfolds across my studio walls, recalls a patchwork of experiences from various realities, now ‘contaminated’ by diverse encounters.” In this context, Segard sees contamination as a form of collaboration, inspired by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World.

The Étang-de-Berre, a brackish water lagoon on the Mediterranean coast, holds a paradoxical history. Once recognised for its rich biodiversity and remarkable fauna, the area became host to one of the largest petrochemical complexes in southern France during the 1960s. Spanning nearly 1,000 hectares, the Berre cluster includes petrochemical plants, harbours, pipelines, and distribution terminals. This juxtaposition of industrial scars and natural resilience has had a deep imprint on Segard’s psyche. Ironically, the factories’ presence allowed some pine forests to remain untouched. In recent decades, as some industrial plants were dismantled, their ruins and non-assigned spaces became fertile ground for marginal and illicit activities.

These gaps, these blind spots in the landscape, represent freedom to Segard: side roads, deviations, and spaces where authority’s gaze falters. He sees them as places for non-linear thought to wander, margins forgotten by the establishment — forests as ruins, holes in the urban fabric offering refuge. Segard finds himself drawn to spaces of rupture and contradiction, where layers of memory, geography, and culture converge. Like a one-way journey into the interior. Dancing at the edge of the world.