Paulo Wirz est titulaire de la Chaire Mucem / Iméra pour l’année académique 2025-26.
Son projet de recherche à l'Iméra, Institut d'Études Avancées d’Aix Marseille Université, explore la dualité ambivalente de la protection et de l’agression à travers une enquête artistique et anthropologique sur les talismans, les amulettes et les artefacts symboliques de la Méditerranée.
L’agression et la protection sont souvent les deux faces d’une même pièce dans le comportement humain et les structures sociales, car l’acte de se défendre ou de défendre sa communauté s’accompagne généralement d’un potentiel, voire d’une nécessité, d’agression. S’appuyant sur les collections du Mucem, il utilisera le médium de la céramique pour développer un nouveau corpus d’œuvres pendant son séjour à Marseille.
Pour en savoir plus, consultez sa page résident en consultant le lien ci-dessous
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0:08 My name is Paulo Wirtz. I am a visual artist based in Switzerland. I come originally from Brazil, but I have done my studies in photography in the Art School of Zurich and in fine arts in the Art School of Geneva. And I have been working mostly with sculpture and site-specific installations, but also with video and photography. I would say that my artistic research draws from topics related to death, not death as a biological phenomenon, but how our civilization and our species evolved throughout history within the complex symbolism we created around death.
0:43 And I would say that the fields that I draw most inspiration from are sociology, ethnography, anthropology and the science of religions. So here at AIMERA, I will be doing a five-month research with a focus on amulets and talismans from the Mediterranean landscape. I will be doing this together with the collection of the museum. And in order to further develop my body of work, I will be working mostly with Egyptian technique called the Egyptian paste, which is a special body of clay or ceramics developed in ancient Egypt that was mostly made for the productions of ritualistic and religious
1:21 objects, such as amulets and talismans. And through trade and diplomacy and also like travels in the Mediterranean, all these objects were, and this technique as well, was highly spread in the Mediterranean. And even here in Marseille. And what interests me the most in amulets and talismans are this imbebid duality that they have of protection and aggression. So I'm questioning myself if aggression is a necessary part of protection, whether the threat of aggression is an essential part of effective defense, and whether preparing for
1:53 aggression makes it inevitable. My interest in animism stems from my upbringing in the Paraiba Valley, which is a region that was highly shaped by the colonization process of South America, bringing together native indigenous populations with enslaved Africans and European colonizers, which led to new syncretical religious beliefs. And I'm very interested into this phenomenon. And the parts of the talismans and amulets, this interest started in 2022 in a residency I did in Egypt, where I was doing most of the research on mummification process, ancient
2:29 board games, and narratives related to immortality. So my expectations here at the IMERA within these five months will be to highly collaborate with the museum's collection, at the specific focus of the religious collection they have, with ex votos, amulets and talismans. And during this time I would also like to try to establish exchange between the institutes of Arcaia and Ideas, which are the anthropology and archaeology departments of the University Ex-Masai. And of course here at the IMERA it's a highly privilege to have this very
3:06 multidisciplinary group of persons, which I'm looking very forward to discuss and collaborate and learn from them.
