Notes from the Big Top: PORTA x Pangea

Now it's time to introduce our partners in mischief. Pangea is Laëtitia Rouget and Colombine Jubert, who met as students in London, now work between Paris and Lisbon, and since 2020 have been building a borderless world of their own, one hand-painted flag at a time.

We asked them about dreams, duos, Fellini and Ayurveda, the childhood ornaments they still unwrap with wonder, and what they hope a stranger feels when they stop in front of our windows.

Your world is a tower of dreams stacked one on another, each holding up the next. Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious, a way of reading the desires we can’t say aloud. But your manifesto asks something sharper: “Do you dream your own dreams? Can you even dream still?” Let’s start there with whatever’s swimming around your heads these days.

Colombine: So many things! We have carried a bag full of dreams since the beginning of our project, and it keeps getting bigger, haha! These days I would say at the top of the pile there is a strong wish to design a whole place (a hotel, maybe?) with the Pangea spirit. We’re also dreaming of making a full boat makeover (like Cleon Peterson did on the Gitana boat), or even a hot-air balloon would be great!

Long before the continents drifted into the shapes on our maps, they were a single landmass. You two met in London, one a painter and ceramicist, the other trained in fashion, and now you work between Paris and Lisbon. What did each of you carry over from your own continent, and what only came into being once you collided?

Laëtitia: Pangea is a project without boundaries, so it feels very natural that we keep a lot of freedom in our practice and duo. Living apart gives us different perspectives and sensibilities, which enrich our drawings and the projects we develop. I like to work alone next to a pine forest, while Colombine loves living in the middle of Paris and looking after the atelier. This balance is our perfect equilibrium. These two energies are the essence of Pangea: one foot in the contemporary city, and a dreamy, deep respect for the nature around us.

Colombine: I would say I bring a certain energy that drives the project forward; I like challenging Laëti. Laëtitia has the (magic) power of making things simple when I tend to overthink, which eases things a lot. And together we have a strength that allows us to make these dreamy projects come true. We can really state that we are stronger together, and I guess the Porta duo feels the same.

Every duo has its juggler and its tightrope walker. Where do the two of you see things differently?

Laëtitia: Colombine is a Leo and I’m a Pisces. In Ayurveda, Colombine is Pitta, the fire, and I am Vata, the air. This explains a lot about our different personalities and sensibilities, and those differences are what make our duo so complementary. One of us sees the whole architecture first, the other the single detail that makes it breathe. The pieces usually end up somewhere neither of us planned, which is beautiful.

Utopia is a word with a double meaning: no place, and good place. Pangea has been building its own borderless world since 2020. Is it somewhere that doesn’t exist yet, or somewhere that comes alive each time someone hangs a flag or strikes a match?

Pangea: Both, and that tension is the point. Pangea is a flash-forward to a poetic future without borders, so it doesn’t exist yet. But it flickers into being whenever someone joins in: in our exhibitions, our performances and even in the daily objects people can get. Utopia isn’t a place you arrive at, it’s a path you walk, and Pangea is an invitation to take the first step.

Carnivals usually belong to summer, or to the last wild days before Lent. You pitched your striped tent in the snow. Why bring the carnival into the darkest weeks of the year, and what changes when the fairground is lit against winter?

Pangea: Because that’s when we need it most! Carnival is a pause in the rules, a blast of fun and light that makes even more sense in the cold darkness of winter. We love the joy of carnivals and parades, which bring back the child within ourselves. In the times we’re living in, people need hope, and moments of joy with the people they love, to recharge and find some light again.

The words “text” and “textile” share a Latin root, texere, to weave. Your manifesto declares “we draw, dance, dream, drape.” When you work in fabric, are you writing? What story is stitched into this collection?

Pangea: More than a story, it’s a tale that we wrote for Porta, called The Parade. Every year, on the winter solstice, a small tribe of spirits and creatures gathers at sunset atop the hill in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, to perform a ritual that brings light and warmth to the heart of plants, minerals, animals, and people of Brooklyn. They are invisible to the naked eye. Although they sometimes reveal themselves in children’s dreams, the only tangible evidence of their existence lies in the many objects left behind in the wake of their wondrous parade: banners, parade hats, matches or even socks they wore for the parade. It’s our little Christmas story :)

Fellini, Cocteau, the Bauhaus stage, Sonia Delaunay, Hilma af Klint: this carnival was fished from a very deep sea. But every studio has a few treasures that surface again and again, project after project. What or who lives in perpetuity on the moodboards of your work together?

Pangea: The artists you mention represent our art education, and they’ve always been a huge inspiration. It’s what we were born into. But our inspiration doesn’t only come from famous artists. It comes from many other places: trips, people we meet, conversations, and the musicians who accompany our daily lives. Among the most recurrent, I would say, the philosopher Bruno Latour is often hiding behind the meaning of our flags, next to Philippe Katerine (French musician), who brings wit and poetry. Another significant inspiration is ancient mythology and symbol-based systems (religion, heraldic culture, etc.) that we love to mix with contemporary pop language.

Every object here is dressed as something ordinary while secretly being something fantastical. When you begin a piece, which comes first: the ordinary thing or the spell you want to cast on it?

Pangea: The spell, almost always. We start with a feeling or a small ritual we want to exist, then look for the best object that could carry it. An ordinary object makes the magic easier to bring home. But we don’t want it to stay ordinary, so we always sprinkle some of our magic on it, to make it different from anything you’d see elsewhere and, importantly, a piece people want to collect and cherish for years.

The notecards read like tarot pulled from a magician’s sleeve. If each of you drew one right now, which card would you get, and what do you hope it’s telling you about the year ahead?

Laëtitia: I would love to pick up the Sun, which represents joy, radiant energy, and the light of consciousness washing away confusion. It is widely considered the most positive, fortunate card in the entire tarot deck, signaling a period of radiant energy that we feel is well needed at the moment. But of course, I would probably not pick this one, as a card that has been following me for years is the Moon.

Colombine: I would hope to pick the World, a card of accomplishment and balance, opening the door of harmony between elements. It’s also a card calling for travels and exploration, and I am up for that!

The collection was made to come back out of storage year after year, a little more lived-in each time. What’s an object from your own childhood holidays that you still unwrap with the same feeling?

Laëtitia: Mine is probably the Christmas sock. I’m so excited that we got to design our own this year, to give even more meaning to an object that has been part of my Christmases since I was a child.

Colombine: On my side, the Christmas tree decorations hold a very dear place in my heart. Even today, decorating the Christmas tree is almost a ceremony in my family, and I have brought this ritual into my own house. Opening the battered cardboard to rediscover the Christmas tree decorations was (and still is) a renewed wonder. Then comes the argument with my father and sister on how to decorate properly (and in which order!!), but that’s another story.

Since we all agree that sensible can wait until January, what’s the most gloriously unsensible thing you each plan to do this season?

Laëtitia: Sleep and watch Christmas movies hidden under the duvet.

Colombine: Jump on the train to Amsterdam or London to hunt for some Christmas gems and cinnamon cappuccinos!

A decorated shop window at Christmas promises that something magical is happening just on the other side of the glass. What do you hope a stranger on a New York sidewalk feels when they stop in front of ours?

Pangea: The tug of a door left slightly open. We hope they feel curious, a little lighter, and invited into a world that has room for them. If someone walks away having smiled at something strange and beautiful, that’s enough for us!

Pangea told us their work is shaped as much by the musicians in their daily lives as by any painter, so naturally we asked for the soundtrack. What arrived is a carnival in 20 songs: Juliette Gréco and Jeanne Moreau sharing the bill with Queen and Donna Summer, Dalida and Nada crossing paths with Bonnie Banane and La Femme, and a little Truffaut, a little Nat King Cole and a Paul McCartney love song tucked in for good measure. Put it on while you trim the tree, write your cards or argue over the order of the ornaments.

LISTEN TO THE PLAYLIST