The exhibition Agnès Varda, L’île et elle brings together several installations displayed over the entire gallery space of the Fondation Cartier. They have been, for the most part, created especially for this occasion and their starting point is Noirmoutier Island, where the artist regularly sojourns.
Le Passage du Gois installation is a long corridor simulating a causeway, which acts as the only link to the island, and becomes completely submerged at high tide. A video representing the ocean rising and descending over the causeway is projected onto a translucent plastic curtain. At low tide, visitors are invited to visit the island by passing through the curtain. Other installations are full of surprises, like La Grande carte postale ou Souvenir de Noirmoutier and Le Tombeau de Zgougou. The bright and summery installation Ping-Pong, Tong et Camping is a film projected on an inflatable mattress and a slide-show of flip-flops framed by a beach tube, a hymn to colored plastic. La Cabane aux portraits presents portraits of sixty islanders. As for the walls of Ma Cabane de l’Échec, they are made of film footage from Les Créatures, shot on the island in 1966.
Two pieces already exhibited in Paris in 2005 are once again on display in this show. Les Veuves de Noirmoutier is centered around a large video of women on the beach dressed in black, surrounded by short video profiles that give first-hand accounts of widowhood. Le Triptyque de Noirmoutier depicts an intimate scene of three characters in a kitchen and encourages the visitor to open its lateral panels, upon which the off-screen goings-on of a man on a beach and a woman arranging a closet are revealed.