The Mathilde Rosier exhibition offered a new look at the original value of
agriculture in our culture. Built around the artist’s works from 2019, it raised
the issue of the relationship between the human body and the land that it
farms. The problem of feeding the growing number of people on Earth and the prevailing agricultural crisis are well known. There is a problem with the
way we touch the ground, how we use it, and how we relate to it. Alternatives
to the prevailing model of agri-business imply a real revolution in the method
of production and the attitude to plants and the meat consumed, highlighting
the need for a radical change defined as agroecology. Agroecological mod-
els are more readily developed in places like Jacmel in Haiti, where the vast
majority of the population is involved in agriculture, rather than, for example,
in Burgundy (the artist’s home) where monoculture and powerful agricultural
enterprises poison the soil, crops and living organisms with pesticides. Rural
areas have a huge geopolitical impact, perhaps greater than big cities, and
the global south will likely lead the new agricultural era. Agriculture began in
the Neolithic Age and it gave birth to civilisation. It should be seen not only
as one of the sectors of the economy, but as a way of life and philosophy.
Our bodies are tied to farming and the field — though perhaps this tie is felt
mainly indirectly, today — the interdependence and sensitivity that exists
between body and the land should be duly honoured. Agrarian dance is the
most direct form of civilisation’s relationship with agriculture, connecting
the body of a dancer with that of a peasant in the field.