One of this year’s highlights at Le Voyage à Nantes, Théo Mercier’s Fossil Opera turns Place Graslin into a striking open-air stage where sculpture, sound, and urban archaeology intersect. On view throughout the summer, the monumental site-specific installation recasts the city as a shifting geological landscape, exposing forgotten layers of its past.
A geological performance that unearths the city’s hidden past
Installed in front of the Opéra Graslin, Fossil Opera dissolves the boundaries between sculpture, performance and architecture. Mercier imagines the square as if it has been fractured by a slow tectonic force, with towering, ammonite-like ridges of compacted sand reaching 4.4 metres surging from the ground. The scene is poised between natural upheaval and stagecraft.
Half-buried cars and construction rubble gathered across Nantes punctuate the sandy terrain, evoking traces of the city’s recent history. Altered opera recordings drift from the abandoned vehicles, creating an eerie dialogue with the historic opera house and filling the square with an uncanny theatrical presence.
Borrowed materials and the poetry of impermanence
Working across sculpture, installation, performance, and scenography, Théo Mercier is known for revealing unexpected narratives through everyday objects and reclaimed materials. Fossil Opera marks the first time he has used sand as the primary material in an outdoor work.
Sand from regional quarries, rubble from Nantes building sites, and discarded vehicles from a local repair shop come together in a temporary portrait of the city. In keeping with Mercier’s sustainable practice, every element will return to its source once Le Voyage à Nantes concludes, leaving only the memory of a landscape shaped by time, change, and collective history.
Step into the world of Théo Mercier, where he shares how he “listens” to space, transforms ordinary materials into poetic works, and reimagines the boundaries between sculpture, performance and architecture in our conversation.
Photography by ERWAN FICHOU
