Les Quatre Parties du Monde

In the collection of the Petit Palais museum in Paris, Laurence Aëgerter discovered a series of tapestries, Les Quatre Parties du monde. Inspired by an 18th century allegory of the four continents, Europe, Africa, Asia and America, Laurence Aëgerter imagined a monumental collage. Each element taken out of its original context symbolizes the current state of the globalized world, dehumanized by games of power, subject to the inexorable rise in sea levels. This jacquard tapestry has been woven with yarns made of recycled plastic bottles.

The original tapestry from the 18th century was woven by the weaver’s workshop of Alexander Baert, in Amsterdam, according to the “cartoon” (design) by Lodewijk van Schoor (1698-1752).

This work was made on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Ici mieux qu’en face’ at the Musée du Petit Palais in Paris, in 2020-2021.
You can watch here a 10 min film, in which the artist and the curators talk about their favorite work.