Photograph, Coconut in lead sarcophagus, 50 x 62,5 cm, Städtische Sammlung Erlangen
Julian Charrière's works operate at the interface between art and science. Human interventions in nature and their effects are addressed in the same way as the symbolic charging of individual natural monuments and the fetishization of nature.
Equally sensual, scientific, auratic, curious and enigmatic, Charrière's works trigger an intense, moving reflection on the human relationship to nature in the viewer. The photograph of Coconut Lead Fondue was taken on an island in the Bikini Atoll, a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean where the USA carried out nuclear weapons tests in the 1940s and 1950s, depriving the islanders of their home. Charrière brought the coconut back from the radioactively contaminated island and encased it in a lead sarcophagus to protect it from the radiation.
