Polynesia 66, carnet de constellations

The statement “My skin is a landscape” opens the travel journal created by French artist Véronique Caye between December 2024 and January 2026. Following in the footsteps of her father, who stayed in French Polynesia in 1966, the artist travels to these islands to explore the connections that link her to these places she has never set foot in, in order to reconstruct a part of her family history. In 1966, Emmanuel Caye, a young veterinarian, went to serve his military duty on the atoll of Reao with the mission of studying the marine life. That same year, the French army began nuclear testing in the Pacific. Decades later, both Véronique and her father developed numerous skin cancers that left scars on their bodies. Through private and official documents, photographs, and contemporary or archival films—some created by the artist, others collected— Polynesia 66 is an investigation into the persistence of nuclear history. The project explores the hypothesis of a link between the health issues experienced by the artist and her father and the radiation present on these atolls. For Véronique Caye, the skin becomes a map, where the scars form the traces of an atomic cartography that persists to this day. From the intimacy of wounds to the spectacle of nuclear explosions, to the bureaucratic labyrinths the artist must navigate, this project poetically highlights the geopolitical stakes and the marks history leaves on microhistory. The images of the stunning landscapes that punctuate this journal dialogue with the first-person texts written by the artist, recounting her journey as she searches for traces of her father’s presence in Polynesia. Often associated with a paradisiacal iconography, these lands here reveal the marks of radioactivity, where beauty and unease coexist. The constellation of Orion runs through the project: the artist wishes to replicate its shape on her scars, as the names of the nuclear tests conducted in 1966 correspond to the stars in this constellation—one of the few visible from both hemispheres. From the celestial macrocosm to the cellular microcosm, the various documents collected in this travel journal expose a nebula of political, ecological, medical, and personal significance. Marta Ponsa, February 2026