Pack What You Need

What do we carry in our luggage when departure precedes us?

By searching too hard, we end up becoming the story we were pursuing.​

 

It is out of sight, behind the walls of Jardin Rouge, that artist Milan Sanka's reflection proliferates. Working in the narrative figurative style, the artist depicts his environment using a limited palette and minimal graphic language. Reconstructing his heritage, he poeticizes secrets gleaned from confidences or the twists and turns of a verse, in a place conducive to re-enchanting the paths of his identity. On one side, his maternal ancestors deserted Spain, swept up in the turmoil of the Retirada; on the other, his paternal lineage left the confines of Martinique to reach the shores of metropolitan France. The common thread remains that of displacement, of hidden forms of exile. With rare lucidity, the artist orchestrates a mirrored story, whose intertwined trajectories forge the being in the making.​

 

From this work, Milan Sanka constructs an intimate and memorial cartography, imbued with the gentleness of play. True to his practice, the artist handles synthesis with acuity, offering an immediate reading of a journey strewn with pitfalls. The essential is there: on this journey, the artist carries the necessary with him in his luggage.