Marguerite Humeau’s work stages great crossings in space and time, transitions from the animal kingdom to the mineral kingdom, and encounters between personal desires and natural forces. The artist explores the possibilities of communication and tangency between these different worlds, developing speculative narratives in which unknown, invisible or extinct forms come to life. Prehistory and biology, anthropology and linguistics, engineering and science fiction, technology and mythology are just some of the references that merge into a bewildering spectacle, full of references to the past but at the same time deeply contemporary. The artist’s interdisciplinary research, often conducted in collaboration with experts and scholars from various sectors, feeds a practice that ranges from sculpture to installation, from drawing to sound. The specificity and potential of each medium is exploited to generate works that question the present, vibrating with the memory of the past and with the anticipation for the future. The installation presented in Belgrade, composed of the sound work Cleopatra – A Cappella (2014) and the site-specific environment Black Mamba (2015), is emblematic of this multifaceted research and production path: the hypnotic and poisonous yellow pigment of the walls provides the setting for the synthetic voice of Cleopatra, resurrected from the past like a futuristic diva. A few grams of snake venom are diluted inside the paint that covers the walls of the room, the floor and the ceiling of a fictitious and timeless space. A place that may initially appear as a passageway, almost empty, but soon reveals its violent, enigmatic and seductive nature.