(Click to enlarge)

1999

Like many other artists in 1990’s, my first experimentations in trying to capture the visible focused on the human body seen as a mysterious, sacred, poeticised and often distorted object. According to Merleau-Ponty, we have only our body to resort to and, as he asserts, it does not operate as a recorder of reality but as a producer of reality. As a woman, I also enjoyed to represent male characters. So very slowly did I realize how anthropocentric my view was, and how myself, like many others, thought the human to be the sole owner of intelligence.

During a university exhibition, I did seven paintings while welcoming conversations with the public. Constraining myself in time and space, the execution was swift between the broad brushstrokes and the direct observation of the model in the gallery space. In this case, only his physical characteristics were taken into consideration. Three canvases were conceived to mould the corners of a wall with the edge of the canvases plastered in order to smudge the limits between wall and canvas. In each painting, a repeated geometrical form simulated a door through which the visitor was invited to be voyeur.