Anaïs Tondeur and Yesenia Thibault-Picazo.

Anaïs Tondeur and Yesenia Thibault-Picazo.

Anaïs Tondeur couldn’t help but be blown away by the wild winds at Fort Dunree, in Donegal, when she first visited Artlink’s site as International Artist in Residence in 2018.  It quickly began to inform her work during the residency, which included a workshop with the local community to explore new rituals as a way of reflecting on our relationship with the earth and natural elements.  “The Storm Tamer’s Collection” was born from this experience, and has evolved into a collaborative project between visual artist Anaïs Tondeur and interdisciplinary designer and musician Yesenia Thibault-Picazo.  

Anaïs Tondeur ‘s artistic practice dissolves the boundary between art and science, exploring the intersections between natural sciences, anthropology, myth making and new media processes, fashioning speculative narratives to deepen our understanding of the world. Yesenia Thibault-Picazo is equally inspired by the exploration of the narrative potential of materials. Defining herself as a “material teller”, she uses design as a tool to engage audiences with contemporary ecological challenges, and examine our evolving relationship with nature.

Since the dawn of time, certain women and men and even some white eagles have been recognized as being gifted with the ability to affect the weather. These “tempestarii” or storm tamers were venerated, feared, sometimes hated for the consequences of their power over the land and the population. It is even said that some fled into the clouds to escape the revenge of winemakers they had ruined. While contemporary engineers promise the diversion of hurricanes, the cooling down of the planet or the increase of the atmosphere’s albedo, this project gathers a large collection of objects and practices revealing attempts to control the weather across time and continents. The installation at Artlink presents the result of an investigation on rituals, practices and superstitions to call or tame the wind. This collection was gathered through calls to contribute, public workshops, as well as site specific research highlighting local folklore and rites around one natural element.