In memory of Zgougou the cat

The Tomb of Zgougou (2016) is a 3 minute and 40 second video presented in the gardens of the Cartier Foundation art gallery in Paris. It is about the life and death of Agnes Varda’s beloved cat Zgougou. A bronze statue of Zgoughou stands in the garden too.

Agnes Varda (1928-2019) was a Belgium-born French film director and artist, particularly influential in the French New Wave movement of the 1950s and 60s. Her parents moved to Sete in France in 1940, before she moved to Paris to study art history and photography, as well as literature and psychology. She became interested in film making and writing screen plays. She says of her approach to film making that it was ‘instinctive and feminine.’

Her cat Zgougou died in 2005. It is buried in a garden on the island of Noirmoutier. Agnes Varda decided to make her a beautiful grave and film it. The short video has images of Zgougou seen on the burial mound, which is now covered with shells and paper flowers. The view moves up from the grave to the umbrella pine trees, the ocean, and the corner of the island where Zgougou lies – ‘a tiny dot on the planet, a tiny little kitty’ she says.

Only four people attended the funeral of American singer Jim Morrison in 1971 in Paris – Agnes Varda was one of them, saying farewell to her friend. Agnes Varda died from cancer in 2019 in Paris at the age of 90. Attending her funeral were celebrities such as Catherine Deneuve, Julie Gayet, and Jane Birkin.

The bronze statue of Zgougou remains in the Cartier Foundation art gallery in Paris.

Agnes Varda, 2019 Source: martinkraft.com 13 February 2029

MARTINA NICOLLS

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Martina Nicolls is an Australian author and international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilisation, and foreign aid audits and evaluations.

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