Mapping is a mixed-media wall installation in two sections: Timeline and Moon Atlas. The artwork re-traces the topography of terror that connected two WW2 sites: London, a major V2 target and Mittelbau-Dora Concentration Camp in Germany. Layering, concealing and expending upon the topographical aspects of the sites, Mapping intends to visually mesh together space and time by combining the history and memories of Londoners, the slave labourers and survivors of Mittelbau-Dora with that of rocket engineering and spaceflight.
Moon Atlas
For Dupré, the toughest part of the project was the visual translation of the stories of Dora Concentration Camp and V2 victims. How does an artist respond to such horror ?
Moon Atlas consists of layers of hand written words, fragments of technical diagrams, lists of WW2 sites of terror, textual description of concentration camp barracks, dates and places of London V2 attacks, names of Moon craters and landing sites.
Moon Atlas is an unreadable translation of the unbearable. A ‘defeat’ for the artist.
Françoise Dupré: Mapping, Moon Atlas, 2016. Installation detail. © FXP Photography, London.
Timeline
Faced with the tangled and complex stories linked to the V2, multiple narratives that take us across continents through time and space, Dupré worked on a 4 meter wide and 2 meter high wall timeline.
Timeline draws out, methodically and obsessively, multiple and detailed connections that link together nations as well as individuals whose lives were dramatically changed by choice or force through major WW2 and post-war events.
Françoise Dupré: Mapping, Timeline, 2016. Installation detail. © FXP Photography, London.
Timeline and Moon Atlas form a contrasting pair that combines factual data and the embodiment of human experience.
For Peckham Platform exhibition, Timeline and Moon Atlas were installed on opposite walls with Rebecca Snow film Grey Area: a map sketched in film projected on Timeline.
Viewers were invited to to stand between – to interrogate, to decipher, to challenge. To be watchful and care for our histories, cultures and ethics. This is the legacy and ideal that Dora survivors are passing on.
Rebecca Snow: Grey Area: a map sketched in film projected on Françoise Dupré: Mapping, Timeline. DORA PROJECT Exhibition, Peckham Platform, 2016. © FXP Photography, London.
Dora Project 