WHAT MUST ENDURE — ART, LIVING SYSTEMS AND TRANSMISSION

For Lifinity brings together a series of environmental, photographic and artistic actions developed by Marie De Decker in Poudre d’Or, Mauritius, where she lives.

Each year, the artist devotes a two-month field mission to the mangrove and its surrounding coastal areas. During this period, she removes waste and abandoned materials accumulated among the roots, along the shoreline and in the spaces where land and water meet.

Alongside this environmental work, Marie De Decker photographs the fishermen of Poudre d’Or, their gestures, tools and working environments. These images form an evolving archive of practices and knowledge transmitted through experience, repetition and direct contact with the lagoon. Photography becomes a means of preserving the memory of these traditions while recognising the people who continue to carry and transform them.

Materials gathered during the clean-up actions are sorted, cleaned and, whenever possible, reintegrated into artisanal and artistic processes. Discarded nets, fragments and other collected matter enter a new cycle through gestures of assembly, modelling, textile construction and gilding. Their transformation does not erase their origin; it allows them to retain the memory of the environment from which they were removed.

Environmental care, photographic documentation and material transformation form a continuous approach. Cleaning acts directly upon the site. Photography records the gestures and knowledge connected to it. Artistic practice gives recovered materials another duration and another space of circulation.

Currently carried out independently, these actions form the foundation of For Lifinity, a project intended to develop into a lasting framework connecting environmental engagement, living heritage, craftsmanship and artistic research. Its future development will support encounters and collaborations with local communities, craftspeople, researchers and cultural or environmental institutions.

For Lifinity begins with a repeated presence in one place: caring for an environment, preserving the knowledge held within it and transforming recovered matter without separating it from its history.