This catalogue of silhouettes gives us the gaze of a young, twenty-first century artist who seizes the female nude, a genre with a long tradition dating back to painting that has been highly valued by photographers since the medium’s invention in the nineteenth century. Accepting that nowadays it is still difficult to be a woman by freeing oneself from the male point of view , particularly in the Japanese and Korean cultures. Ina Jang shakes up the current visual culture codes. Her latest series Utopia extends the thinking that the South Korean artist brings to the representation of the female body in photography. Here, she looks at the figure of the pin-up as found in the pages of girlie magazines. Produced from images found on Japanese internet sites, this series shows silhouettes of female bodies in suggestive poses. The artist did not modify the poses but we find her signature in the technique of collage and colour treatment. On the other hand, the bodies have been cut out to give way to the coloured backgrounds. If this series originated from an imagery created by men for men, the bright colours, the metaphorical shapes and a certain anonymity establish a new dialogue with those who look at them, quite different from that intended by the original images. By removing the bodies from view, the artist plays with the idea of a blank canvas on which it becomes possible to compose a new figure of femininity.
Nathalie Herschdorfer
Nathalie Herschdorfer is an author and photographic historian.
Ina Jang : Utopia
From 18th June to 15 October 2017
Musée des beaux-arts Le Locle
Marie-Anne-Calame 6
2400 Le Locle
Suisse
