Published in 2012 by Editions Xavier Barral, “Continents Noirs” documents a major installation by Annette Messager at the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg. The title references Freud’s “dark continent” of the female unconscious and the flying island from Gulliver’s Travels. The work consists of black, agglomerated, and wrapped objects suspended from the ceiling like fossilized islands or a carbonized city. Messager blends the playful with the unsettling, using materials like crumpled black aluminum foil and fabric to create a landscape that oscillates between the monumental and the miniature. The book features reproductions of all works alongside a specially commissioned essay by sci-fi writer Norman Spinrad, providing a unique literary perspective on Messager’s eerie, metaphysical explorations of daily life and global tension.
