Jean de Malherbe and Elsa & Johanna have been working together since 2017. At that time, he organized the first gallery exhibition for the two young artists at Galerie La Forest Divonne in Brussels.
For the PhotoBrussels Festival 2024, they revisit their journey together, spanning through the successive series that have brought recognition to the photographer duo, from «A Couple of Them» (2014-2016) to «Douze heures du jour et de la nuit» (2023), including «The Timeless Story of Moormerland» (2021- 2022), «Palace Odyssée» (2020), «Le reflet de la cuillère» (2017) and «Beyond the Shadows» (2018-2019).
Elsa & Johanna are the models of their own images, changing gender, role, age or emotion in turn, to the rhythm of the settings that touch and inspire them. Together, Johanna Benaïnous and Elsa Parra have created a language and atmosphere that have won them numerous awards and, from 2022, a retrospective at the Städtische Galerie in Karlsruhe and a solo show at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie.
Johanna Benaïnous (1991) and Elsa Parra (1990) have formed a duo of visual artists, photographers and filmmakers since 2014. They met at the School of Visual Art in New York and received the jury’s congratulations from the Beaux-Arts de Paris (ENSBA) in 2015.
«Working at the crossroads of photography, performance and video, since meeting they have been creating visual narratives in which they are the interpreters. The use of autofiction, at the heart of Elsa & Johanna’s work, enables them to portray characters freed from their own identity, questioning in the process the contemporary individual, notions of self-representation and anonymity.» Simon Baker, director of the MEP.
This solo show at Galerie La Forest Divonne Brussels follows a third exhibition at Galerie La Forest Divonne Paris, and is part of a busy period for Elsa & Johanna : prizewinners for the creation of two artistic posters for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, currently on display on Quai de la Mégisserie in Paris’s 1st arrondissement; prizewinners in the Capsule 2023 Residency at Champ des impossibles, in the Perche region, under the direction of Christine Ollier; selected for the Grand Paris Express «Tandem» program to create a perennial work in one of the future metro stations in collaboration with architect Thomas Richez, under the direction of José-Manuel Gonçalvès.
An exhibition as part of the PhotoBrussels Festival 2024
Elsa & Johanna : Chronicles Of The Ordinary
From january 18 to march 9, 2024
Opening : Thursday, January 18, 2024, from 5pm to 9pm
Galerie La Forest Divonne
66 rue de l’Hôtel des Monnaies
1060 Brussels, Belgium
www.galerielaforestdivonne.com
