First part of a photographic artwork in four parts.
I photographed the body of a woman in a swimsuit in front of a huge building. I want to en- large, to widen the limits of this body, to look at it in another direction, to transform it into a sculpture or a huge fruit. This woman is as tall and vast as the building overlooking the city. This «equality» size amuses me. I want her to go beyond the frame, to become a giant, a goddess above the city. Her buttocks and her sex are the emblems of a city that only wants to open to the unknown, the new.
My work began in the city, space where domination, the balance of power is omnipresent and no longer necessary.
This character, in this setting, opens the legs and enjoys his own power. This giant body is at the height of the body of all hidden women.
And so, I come to wonder about « L’Origine du monde ». How to show the female body, buttocks, sex, disconnecting from procreation, desire, object? Is not it time to remove the veils on our eyes?
I become AVA : this part of me, intuitive, untamed, free.
Water is the first part of a cycle of four exhibitions, metaphors of the power of the feminine. The city will come back later. For me in this first phase, i have to return to the source.
I have to nd where I come from and where he comes from too. I’ll go back to the begin- ning. Before the woman’s body is stolen, be used to, or disconnected from, her power. I come back into the womb, into this alchemical cauldron.
Following my intuition, I nd myself in the water. Where life started, in silence, in nothing, in the dark: AVA will be born where liquid and solid mix, where the human being is part of the whole.
These 24 photographs were taken for a year, in the Paris region, with the same model and collaboratice, Violaine Dumoulin. They form a whole. The same female body naked in water, sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete, sometimes liquid, sometimes solid. On some shots, only parts of the body appear, on others all. The presence of light evolves as the year progresses and re ects the movements and the protean instability of the feminine.
The works presented are of the same size as the spectator. They will invite everyone to dive into their own chaos.
Laure Duchet Paris, June 5, 2019
