Folklore and philosophy meet new age technology in this encounter with otherworld spirits

Paris-based designer- illustrator Julie Stephen Chheng has staged the ‘Fortune Teller’ expo at the Alliance Francaise in Puducherry.
| Photo Credit:
M. Dinesh Varma

Paris-based designer- illustrator Julie Stephen Chheng has staged the ‘Fortune Teller’ expo at the Alliance Francaise in Puducherry.
| Photo Credit:
M. Dinesh Varma

Folklore and philosophy meet new age technology in an encounter with the otherworld in an immersive exhibition by Julie Stephen Chheng, Paris-based designer, illustrator and author, at the Alliance Francaise.

‘Fortune Teller’ is an interactive Augmented Reality installation that uses a mobile application (downloadable via QR-code) to put the viewer face-to-face with nature spirits. The encounter with these spirits from the otherworld also transmit wisdom and philosophical nuggets that serve as real-life navigation tips or cautionary cues.

Julie Stephen Chheng is a graduate from the ‘Arts Décoratifs de Paris’ school and engages in projects in the field of publishing and visual arts that blend state-of-the-art technology and paper. Working out of Volumique Studio in Paris, she is the author of several books and applications, including ‘Poems in Pieces’, ‘The Adventures of a Village’ and ‘The Postal Train’.

The artist blends art, mystery, myth and technology that blurs the line between the seen and the unseen.

Following an art residency in 2014 with the Hong Kong Arts Centre, in 2016, she was an artist-in-residence at the Villa Kujoyama in Digital Arts in Kyoto. Her presentations, include ‘Uramado’ at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (2017) and ‘Folded, Cut and Off the Wall’, a touring exhibition organised by Le Salon du livre jeunesse de Montreuil. Since 2018, she has created window displays for Hermès Tokyo and Maison Hermès Shanghai, and has exhibited ‘Uramado AR’, an augmented reality experience, in venues around the world.

‘Fortune Teller’, is along with ‘Paysages en construction’, two of her latest multifaceted exhibition projects combining artisanal techniques with digital practices.

“The exposition is essentially about nature… and the expressions of human interactions with it across the world”, said Ms. Stephen Chheng.

Her works explore mankind’s relationship with nature by examining the interpretive mechanisms shaped by words and images. Her art echoes the games of childhood and the ‘Oulipo’ movement led by a group of Francophone writers and mathematicians who create literary works using self-imposed constraints.

‘Fortune Teller’, she says, is inspired by the ‘Yijing’, a Book of Metamorphoses, an ancient Chinese divination text dating back to over 2,000 years ago, its exposition of a yin-yang axis of complementing energy forces, and the8 elements of nature, including the trigrams that form 64 figures, which represent the foundational core of Taoism and Confucianism.

Somewhat similar to the Indian philosophical tradition of the ‘pancha bhootas’ (earth, water, fire, wind and ether), the Yijing’s foundational periodic table extends to the elements of mountain, thunder and heaven.

According to the artist, the different messages on offer to the viewer serves as a bridge of interpretation between the individual experience and the external prompt, forming a whole narrative.

Viewers who download the free Fortune Teller mobile app can trigger a world of optical illusion by pointing at visuals of a painted eye that accompany the art work. The result is a spatial narrative that interweaves space and story of the fortune teller that is being put on show across 14 cities in India.

The expo is on till December 2.