works / bidonville
Long-form generative series
JavaScript
512 editions
06/2023
Bidonville is the French word for slum. This series is a somewhat playful and naive take on unplanned urban areas - like a child's view on something terrible.
It’s a reminder that such places exist all over the world. And that a quarter of world’s urban population live with poor access to robust housing, clean water, electricity, and security.
of life and death
The series revolves around the idea of duality. It's both serious and childish. It plays on the contrast between the very crowded slum and the emptiness of the void it seems to float in. Bidonville talks about life and death, and the promiscuity between both in those wild and teeming areas.
Slums represent much more than poverty to me. They also represent life at its fullest, wild and uncontrolled. Life and death. A lot of life and a lot of death all the time, both coexisting in the smallest spaces. That’s the duality I wanted to explore with this project.
the illusion of order
Aesthetically speaking, I’m fascinated by nature and its apparent chaos, and I tend to reject architecture and everything planned and built by humans. But there’s a thing about cityscapes seen from a distance. The diversity of colors and materials, the overwhelming details you get when you stand far from cities give a very organic feel to them.
It reminds us we are tiny living things trying to organize in a huge chaotic system. Order as it’s viewed by humans can only exist at a small level. At a macro scale there’s nothing left but chaos. I wanted the pieces to bring that feeling to the viewer.
riots
Poverty and despair lead to destruction.
