Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Monadelphia decaudria
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Geranium chinum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Phaseoleae
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Baeckea linifolia
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Malpighia spicata
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Byrsonima lucida
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Comandra umbellata santalaceae
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Geranium chinum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Byrsonima lucida
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Dolichos pruriens
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Dolichos pruriens
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Phormium tenax liliaceae
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Unknown specie
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linaceae
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linaria scrophulariaceae
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Thesium humifusum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Geranium chinum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linaceae
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Seed of Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Linum usitatissimum
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
Chernobyl Herbarium
2011 – ongoing
Exclusion Zone, Chernobyl, Ukraine
Radiation level: 1.7 mSv/hour
Soil
Rayogram
Fine art pigment print
on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 gsm
Size: 24 x 36 cm
16 jun – 14 oct. 2022
Explosions of light
Anaïs Tondeur
Anaïs Tondeur was born in 1985. She works and lives in Paris.
A graduate of Central Saint Martins College (2008) and the Royal College of Arts (2010), in London, she was awarded the Prix Art of Change 21 (2021) and the Ars Electronica CyberArts Honorable Mention (2019).
With an approach rooted in ecological thinking, Tondeur is engaged in an interdisciplinary practice through which she explores new ways of recounting the world, enabling transformations in our relationship with other living beings and the great cycles of the earth. By composing a laboratory of attentions, she works through investigation and fiction, performed as walks, installations, photographs or protocols associated with alchemy.
Many of her projects are thus born from encounters, sensorial occurrences with elements, territories or different types of understanding and perceptions of the world. As a result, she is particularly fond of the investigative practice that leads to a state of amplified openness and attention. Whether by tracing real phenomena or by speculating elements and characters, these pursued subjects become guides to worlds that would otherwise be inaccessible to our perceptions.
Several research projects have taken her on expeditions across the Atlantic Ocean, at the rim between tectonic plates, in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, beneath Paris’ surface, through polluted urban soils or below the atmospheric flux of anthropogenic particles. When the investigation territories are inaccessible, the artist creates virtual vehicles that move vicariously for her. Which is how she managed to send a dream into space aboard NASA’s Osiris Rex spacecraft.
Tondeur resided as an Artist in Research and Creation at the former seed storage of the Vilmorin Family (Verrières-le-Buisson, 2020-21), at Chantiers Partagés, under the curation of José-Manuel Goncalves, as well as at 104 (Montrouge, Bourget, 2018-19), Artlink (Ireland, 2019), at the Museum of Arts et Métiers (Paris, 2018-17), at CNES (Paris, 2016), at the Sustainable Culture Laboratory initiated by COAL at the Domaine de Chamarande (2015-16), at the National Museum of Natural History, at the Pierre and Marie Curie Institute (Paris, COP 21 2015) and at La Chaire Arts & Sciences (École Polytechnique, France, 2013-15).
Exhibitions of her work have been held among international institutions, such as the Kröller-Müller Museum (Netherlands), Center Pompidou (Paris), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), MEP (Paris), Frac Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, Serpentines Galleries (London), Bozar (Brussels), Biennale Di Venezia – French Pavillion, (Lieux Infinis), Houston Center of Photography (United States) and the Nam June Paik Art Center (Seoul).
The Chernobyl Herbarium: Fragments of an Exploded Consciousness
We entrust readers with thirty fragments of reflections, meditations, recollections, and images – one for each year that has passed since the explosion that rocked and destroyed a part of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in April 1986. The aesthetic visions, thoughts, and experiences that have made their way into this book hover in a grey region between the singular and self-enclosed, on the one hand, and the generally applicable and universal, on the other. Through words and images, we wish to contribute our humble share to a collaborative grappling with the event of Chernobyl. Unthinkable and unrepresentable as it is, we insist on the need to reflect upon, signify, and symbolize it, taking stock of the consciousness it fragmented and, perhaps, cultivating another, more environmentally attuned way of living.
