Two years after the presentation of his model at the Art Paris fair, the sculpture "Ether (Equality)" now stands on the downstream tip of Seguin Island, in Boulogne-Billancourt. A monumental work 25 meters high by the Japanese artist Kohei Nawa, who had won, in 2019 with the agency Danae specialized in digital art, the international competition launched by the departmental council of Hauts-de-Seine, under the impetus of Patrick Devedjian. The former president wanted an emblematic creation, a figurehead for the Seine Musicale.
A work symbol of equality, which seems to be suspended between the sky and the river and which represents droplets that fall to the ground. "Ether occupies an emblematic site of our territory, which radiates beyond the Hauts-de-Seine through its glorious past and its equally resounding renaissance," said the current president of the department Georges Siffredi (LR), referring to the automotive past of the site, which housed the Renault factories until 1993.
"Kohei Nawa's first permanent monumental sculpture in Europe"
"This island is indeed a high place of the industrial memory of our country, which is recalled by the chromed stainless steel used for this creation," he continues, adding that the work is the "first permanent monumental sculpture in Europe" by Kohei Nawa.
And which is part of the continuity of the Seine musicale, departmental cultural facility, opened in April 2017, and imagined by the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, Pritzker Prize 2014, associated with Jean de Gastine. Japan, which is still present in Boulogne, at the Albert-Kahn departmental museum, renovated by the architect Kengo Kuma.
"This sculpture is a new shining symbol of Franco-Japanese collaboration," said Makita Shimokawa, Japan's ambassador to France, who was present Wednesday for the sculpture's inauguration. Which seems as if posed on the ground, in a game of precarious balance while it is fixed 20 meters below.