Art Now Marguerite Humeau: Echoes

Marguerite Humeau is a French artist living and working in London. Her research led process usually takes the form of large scale installations involving sound and sculpture in which she challenges key issues of the day using complex narratives that synthesise the past with the present.

Humeau’s installation is conceived as a confrontation between life and death, with the gallery transformed into part temple, part laboratory for the industrial production of an elixir for eternal life. At the heart of the space, two semi-abstracted white polystyrene sculptures based on Ancient Egyptian gods, Wadjet (King Cobra) 2015 and Taweret 2015, merge the organic nature of the human body with biological engineering.

Accompanied by the synthetic sound of Cleopatra’s ethereal voice, this hypnotic yellow environment devised from poisonous black mamba python venom, evokes Cleopatra’s death and acts as a reminder of nature’s lethal powers.


Art Now is a series of free exhibitions at Tate Britain focusing on work by emerging artists.