Moving between Martinique and Lausanne, Lucas Erin transforms the garden into a space to think through colonial histories, material exchange, and the shifting relationships between people, places, and time.
27 August 2026
For Lucas Erin, the garden is more than a cultivated landscape. It is a living archive, shaped by movement, memory and histories that continue to unfold across generations. In ‘La Ronde’, presented at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts Lausanne (MCBA), the Franco-Caribbean artist brings installation, sculpture and sound into conversation with his Martinican heritage and his relationship to land and plant life.
Conceived between Martinique and Erin’s studio in Lausanne, the exhibition takes its title from dawn walks through his grandmother’s garden. From this intimate point of departure, Erin considers the rhythms of vegetation across different climates alongside the accelerated histories of exploitation, colonialism and transformation.
Bronze petals, burnt sand, graphite, cable sheathing and found objects become vessels for these interconnected histories. Works such as Lyannaj, Ti Gout, Ti Biten and Île aux fleurs explore what moves between places and people, what is exchanged or taken, and what might be reclaimed. Throughout, materials refuse to remain fixed. They fall, circulate, transform and form new connections.
This exhibition will be on view at Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne from 28 August 2026 to 14 February 2027.
