A muse of the greatest photographers and of Jean-Paul Gaultier in the 1980s, Claudia Huidobro has developed a personal artistic practice that questions the cult of beauty and femininity with dazzling force. From drawings and pastels to photo collage, performance, and music, she uses every means available to deconstruct the myth of perfection around the pervasive theme of violence.
In “Tout contre,” a series of photos taken in a castle in the south of France, her body seems to invade her; the space around her seems to oppress her. Or maybe it is her soul that is not satisfied with her exceptional beauty and would like to fulfill itself without needing to refer to it.
In addition to this series, the artist especially created for Crossing the Line Festival new works with feminine accessories: combs, hair clips, and lipstick, but also scalpels, pages torn from magazines, pictures of hair, and seductive hands. Exaggerated in size and de-contextualized, these usually-banal objects are transformed into a tribal arsenal. The mix of the true and the false reaches its peak on an image of a face being prepared for plastic surgery; in reality it is just a cardboard puppet representing the myth of the supposedly perfect glamorous woman.
This installation is Claudia Huidobro’s third exhibition in New York. She previously appeared in Crossing the Line Festival as part of Olivier Saillard, “Models never talk” 2014.
François Hébel
Lili Chopra
Claudia Huidobro – « Faite main » (Hand made)
Sep 24–Oct 13
FIAF Gallery
22 East 60th Street
New York, NY 10022
https://crossingthelinefestival.org/2018/events/faite-main/
