ARTISTS “IN RESIDENCE”
Personal artistic views but with a universal echo on the themes at the heart of the expeditions.
In the purest spirit of Pacifique and its multidisciplinary approach, we welcome artists in residence on our sailing ships. The mission of these illustrators is to take a personal look at the themes at the heart of the expedition, but with a universal echo.
Their goal is to contribute to a better awareness of sustainable development issues around the world. Throughout the journey, through collective or personal creations, their works of art are shared in the form of publications, exhibitions or any other mode of interaction with the general public, at the ports of call and in Switzerland.
Five publications from 2020 to 2025
Imagined by a collective of three artists gathered under the name of Association Makaline (Katharina Kreil, Matthieu Berthod and Ambroise Héritier), the Sillages project is a series of annual publications in five volumes gathering authors with singular voices in the fields of drawing and travel literature.
Built around the maritime expeditions led by Pacifique from 2020 to 2025, “Sillages” offers carte blanche to guest authors to illustrate the different stages of these expeditions.
Katharina Kreil
Katharina Kreil is an artist-drawer specialized in the art of engraving. She trained at the School of Applied Arts and at the HEAD in Geneva, where she lives and works today. In her work, she explores the fields of narration through various media such as writing, drawing, comics, engraving and performative installations, some of which have been presented in Switzerland and abroad. She is driven by the desire to travel differently, the quest for the “rediscovered journey” and the desire to “take a vibrant look – in drawings, engravings and poetry – at today’s world for tomorrow’s world”. Her love of travel has led her to participate in projects creating connection between individuals and diverse cultures. In 2018, as part of The Ocean Mapping Expedition, she participated in the leg between Maputo (Mozambique) and Durban (South Africa) where she organized an on-board printmaking workshop for the crew members in conjunction with South African printmaking artists.
As part of the Arctic expedition, she took part in the departure of the sailing boat in Brittany in June 2020 and went up to Greenland in 2021 equipped with a press on board for a project of edition with several hands.
Matthieu Berthod
Matthieu Berthod is a graphic designer, illustrator and cartoonist. He was trained in illustration at the School of Decorative Arts in Geneva and in graphic design at the Schule für Gestaltung in Bern. Dividing his time between the city and the mountains, between Switzerland and abroad, he is responsible for the publishing workshop of the Conservatories and Botanical Gardens in Geneva. A traveler at heart, he has embarked on several occasions on sailing ships as an “expedition painter”, notably on board the Fleur de Passion as part of The Ocean Mapping Expedition.
Ambroise Héritier
Ambroise Héritier is a polyvalent artist who works with images, and is at the same time a painter, illustrator, comic book author, photographer, engraver and poster artist. He uses a variety of approaches, techniques and styles. His charcoals, photos or monotypes (single edition prints) are imbued with misty, fleeting, melancholic atmospheres that sometimes fade into a form of abstraction behind a curtain of shadow, mist or rain. He too is a travel enthusiast, having embarked on several occasions as part of the previous Pacific expedition and along the coast of Greenland.
Project in progress
“If my work as a naturalist artist has naturally led me to study the fauna of my region, I have always had a fascination for the boreal world. A two-month trip to northern Scandinavia at the age of 14 to study and draw the birdlife there, is probably not foreign to this propensity. I have been traveling regularly to the north ever since and I am fortunate today to be able to join the crew of the Mauritius to fulfill an old dream: the Unicorn Quest.”
Pierre Baumgart
Born in 1969 in Geneva, Pierre Baumgart has always been passionate about wildlife and nature. He follows in the footsteps of the great Swiss naturalist artist Robert Hainard (1906-1999), whom he met as a child and later asked to teach him his particular technique of engraving, between European tradition and Japanese printmaking, with gradations and touches of color.
A book on the round-the-world voyage aboard the Swiss sailing boat Fleur de Passion
A colorful travel and adventure story illustrated by 20 artists – 10 women and 10 men in equal numbers – retracing the four-and-a-half year expedition around the world (2015-2019) aboard the Swiss sailboat Fleur de Passion as part of The Ocean Mapping Expedition.
Discover, with two illustrations per artist, the drawings that are scattered throughout the book.
The book received an honorable mention for the 2019 Eric Tabarly Award.