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LES APPARENCES
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SALTATION
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UNTITLED
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HUIS CLOS
Les apparences is a work in progress that explores the weight of homophobic insults and the various roles adopted to avoid them. Through these self-stagings, shame becomes a transformative energy and photography becomes a tool for emancipation, focusing on the process that leads from the fear of stigma to its reversal.
In the image Dos #1, a male back, strangely missing arms and a head, is placed on a gray paper pedestal, itself held by a metal rod. The background is also gray paper, but a lighter shade, thus decontextualizing the entire scene. One can see a reference to sculptures glorifying a certain perfection of the male body, as in the ancient works of Myron or the more realistic and symbolic pieces by Rodin. However, the intentionally artificial and sanitized aesthetic of the image questions this heritage and accentuates the sense of bodily discontinuity. The digital removal of certain limbs further disturbs our perception, referring both to the personification of a censored desire that one seeks to recover through various forms of representation such as sculpture, and to certain beauty standards as well as the historically rooted physical and social posture of the male body, as explored by Alix Marie.
The video Untitled presents an empty stage devoid of any audience, introduced by several cameras placed to encompass the entire space. I then enter this stage, playing a character who appears strangely wary of an absent audience. Initially remaining inactive, he is subsequently duplicated into several characters, each reacting in their own way under the gaze of an imagined audience suggested by the empty seats. Although this film is still in progress, its intention is to address the fear of stigma and the strategies employed to avoid self-disclosure, echoing writings by Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis. Whether it truly exists or is simply a product of the protagonist’s imagination, this audience plays a fundamental role, as the protagonist performs solely for it, taking on various roles to avoid revealing himself. Finally, this project will take the form of an installation: a wooden box, with the dimensions of a photo booth, evoking the allegory of the closet. Images will be displayed on the outside, while a video is projected on the inside. To experience it, the viewer must open the door and enter in the enclosed space.