In Indre-et-Loire, the monumental whale by artist Philippe Pasqua denounces the effects of global warming on the oceans

It’s a half-buried carcass. For his new XXL creation, Philippe Pasqua recreated a scene of archaeological excavations. “We find this whole skeleton like when archaeologists discover dinosaur bones” explains the artist. But there, it is a whale. A cetacean which, a priori, has nothing to do in a forest. So what happened? Victim of global warming, pollution and overfishing, this marine mammal from the imagination of Philippe Pasqua came to run aground in a dry pond. A serious message that the artist wishes to convey “poetic and not dramatic”. The location helps. “There is a fantastic energy. I love forests. I actually live in Rome in a forest”, confides Philippe Pasqua.

Art, a messenger of ecological issues

Denouncing the attacks on nature is also the great challenge of Bertrand Rey, who is behind the installation of Philippe Pasqua’s whale in the Duporterie forest. With his wife, this entrepreneur from Tours, keen on art and nature, created, at the end of 2022, the Forethernety foundation. “All our projects aim to make as many people as possible aware of the ecological issue we are going through. I think that art is a very strong way to convey great messages. I strongly believe in the power of emotion” he reports. Longtime friends, Bertrand Rey and Philippe Pasqua have other projects. A few tens of meters from the whale, five huge bronze dead oaks will replace real trees at the end of their life. This installation, called The 5 oaks for eternity aims to show walkers the damage caused by the drought. A growing threat to our forests, the lungs of our planet.

“The whale” Duporterie forest, Esvres (Indre-et-Loire)