When we wander in Google street view, we can be surprised to see a Giant snake skeleton appear, what is it ?
More visited than the Louvre
Have you ever walked on Google Street View ? On the mapping site of the digital giant, this function allows you to wander on the roads of the whole world with the sole force of your click. The landscapes are reconstituted thanks to photographs taken by a vehicle criss-crossing the roads. On the occasion of its 15th anniversary, Google publishes the list of the ten most visited places in the last twelve months. And surprised! In second position, just behind the Eiffel Tower, is the Ocean Serpent, a Giant Snake skeleton sculpture located in Saint-Brévin les Pins (Loire-Atlantique). Designed by the artist Huang Yong Ping for Voyage à Nantes, it represents a long skeleton of a sea serpent. It was the 360° photos posted by an Internet user that enabled Google Street View to offer this virtual tour. This work is therefore virtually more visited than other emblematic places, very popular with tourists such as the Louvre Museum, the Arc de Triomphe or Disneyland Paris.
Appears to the rythm of the tides
the Giant Snake skeleton, called Ocean Serpent created by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, appears to the rhythm of the tides. To the north of Saint-Brevin on the Nez de Chien beach, rises the huge Ocean Serpent by Chinese artist Huang Yong Ping, whose skeleton appears to have come from an archaeological dig. Its movement brings it to life: we guess that it crossed the seas to land its disproportionate mouth on this beach. The line of its vertebrae plays with the curve of the Saint-Nazaire bridge, and the way it arises recalls the architecture of squares, these typical Atlantic coast fisheries. Positioned on the foreshore, the skeleton appears to the rhythm of the tide, and will gradually welcome marine fauna and flora.
A major figure of Chinese Avant-Garde
Born in China on February 18, 1954, in Xiamen in the province of Fujian, the artist died accidentally in his studio in Ivry-sur-Seine on October 19, at only 65 years old. Known and recognized for his excessive and committed works, he had lived in France for 30 years and had been naturalized in 1999. A major figure in Chinese avant-garde art of the 1980s, inspired by the multidisciplinary Dada movement, which challenged ideological, aesthetic and political conventions and constraints, he created the Xiamen Dada group, which refers to cultural revolt . His works are the free reinterpretation of Western philosophies and myths, bringing to light their unspoken and dark sides. Censored works In the early 1980s, Xiamen Dada’s first exhibition in Fujian was censored by the authorities, and the collective responded by burning their canvases, replacing them with trash and objects collected from the surrounding area.
A larger snake at the Grand Palais
When the dramatic events in Tiananmen Square broke out in 1989, Huang Yong Ping was in France for the “Magicians of the Earth” exhibition. Therefore, he decides to stay there to live there. Many exhibitions He participated in numerous exhibitions, notably at the National Museum of African and Oceanic Arts and at the Venice Biennale. Each of his works is inspired by the historical, political, societal and architectural context of his place of exhibition. In 2012, as part of the biennial of contemporary art, Estuaire, of Voyage à Nantes, Huang Yong Ping created and imagined the Ocean Serpent (emblematic figure of Chinese mythology). Located on the foreshore, at the tip of the Nez-de-Chien, the skeleton of the serpent with 135 vertebrae, 130 meters long, appears to the rhythm of the tides. It is now the delight of many passers-by and tourists who like to take pictures of it and invent stories. Huang Yong Ping made a new, even larger snake in the nave of the Grand Palais during the “Monumenta” exhibition in 2016.
