Sonjé | Manifest

Client: MANIFEST – Artist: David Gumbs

Target Medium: Pico G3

Sonjé is a virtual reality experience that immerses participants into a semi-submerged banana plantation, offering a futuristic vision of environmental and cultural collapse in the French West Indies. Rooted in testimonies from agricultural workers, the experience reveals the long-lasting impact of the pesticide Clordecone, used from 1972 to 1993 by the Békés to sustain the banana industry.

The experience offers a haunting reflection on the ecological injustice and colonial legacy, as the land and sea of Martinique and Gaudeloupe remain contaminated, resulting in the poisoning of the population and contaminating the terrestrial and marine flora for an estimated 500 to 700 years.

Developed In collaboration with multimedia artist David Gumbs, Sonjé is a project part of the MANIFEST initiative, which reimagines Europe’s collective memory of the transatlantic slave trade through new artistic perspectives.