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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Mater Earth

Inspired by a bathing pregnant woman, Prune Nourry’s sculpture Mater Earth stretches 90 feet across Château La Coste, in France.

Until Jan 1, 2025
2750 Route De La Cride, 13610 Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France

In 2010, the French artist Prune Nourry photographed a friend who was eight months pregnant lying in a bath of warm milk, à la Cleopatra. She used a camping stove, an inflatable pool, and a ladder to set up the shot in the middle of her studio. Four years ago, Château La Coste, a wine estate that covers 500 acres near Aix-en-Provence, approached Nourry to create a permanent installation for its outdoor-architecture trail. That pregnant woman in a pool—seven rounded forms emerging from milk—immediately came to mind. For this assignment, she would bring the bathing body into a whole new dimension and scale. Now it is 90 feet long, reclines in the earth, and one can enter it. Once inside, it’s difficult to discern if the surrounding matter is stalagmites or roots or organs. Disorientation, a sense of wonder, is the point. —Nadine Zylberberg

Photo: Stéphane Aboudaram/We Are Content(s)