Desiderea Nuncia

Desiderea Nuncia (The messenger of desideration) gathers SMITH’s photographs, Lucien Raphmaj’s texts and Diplomates’ micro-architecture plans, as several knowledges and several ways to materialize the phenomena of desideration.

This mysterious term designates the feeling of an indeterminate lack, resolutely linked to the stars. When the sailors of the past, lost at sea on stormy nights, no longer had the stars to guide them, de-sideration (the lack of stars, and the wish for their return) was a reality for them. Our de-sideration announces itself as the melancholic symptom of the loss of the starry sky (de-sidera), and also promises itself as a desire (desiderium): desire in the face of the disaster of a darkened sensitive world and an atrophied cosmic imagination.

This book takes us through 5 chapters, composed of mindmaps in which the book moves, for a sub-lunar journey, a reverie, a ritual of reconciliation with your cosmic destiny.

Exhibited during the summer of 2021 at the Rencontres d’Arles, Desiderea Nuncia is a vast protean project, orchestrated by SMITH, with multiple facets and permanent evolution.

Desiderea Nuncia is thus presented as a guide to penetrate the sprawling universe of these artists.