It’s 2019 and our bodies are still political.
The 21st century still drags on with the beauty standards of the last century. Those of a young, white, thin, ethereal and heterosexual woman. Beauty, a woman’s first financial asset; is a passport to happy marriage, professional success and social recognition. Both women and men are bombarded with an infinite amount of photoshopped images, which are alienating them and are also driving them to search for ideal beauty. This claustrophobic and impossible standard has only lead us to eternal comparison, frustration and levels of self-hatred. A blinded population starved by its regimes, that became terribly docile and obedient.
To refuse the norm is to choose, to be incorruptible, faithful to oneself, honest, punk in front of a capitalist system that fathers monstrous children of uniformity and consumerism, all made from the same postcolonial and patriarchal mould.
The artist refused the norm. She cherished and desired bodies of all ages, sizes, genders and colours, intending to deconstruct the beauty standards, beginning a quest for honesty, empowerment, acceptance and self-confidence, it is gathering the words of my peers and looking at them tenderly.
These incorruptible bodies are a celebration of the diverse, the unlikely, the ambiguous, the androgynous, the non-obvious and the non-binary.
Les corps incorruptibles is a feminist, queer and anti-racist declaration of love.
Emilie Hallard (1979, France) lives and works in Barcelona, Spain.
Emilie first worked with a diary-based approach focusing on people and nightlife with an intimate, moody and sensual dialogue before she moved on to a more political and straightforward approach. Nowadays, she is interested in intersectional feminism, vulnerability, gender studies, the body and its representation. She has also started a study on arid landscapes.
She took part in different group exhibitions and photo festivals in France, Spain, Tunisia and Switzerland. Her work has been published several times in specialized photography webzines. Her passion for photography led her to curatorship and publishing activities (Maria Inc.), to working as an interpreter for the Rencontres d’Arles or for the photographer Antoine d’Agata or as an assistant at the Michèle Chomette Gallery in Paris. She is now part of the Spanish mixed feminist collective No Sin Fotógrafas.
Her latest book, Les corps incorruptibles, has just been published by Maria Inc.
www.instagram.com/emilie.hallard/
Les Corps Incorruptibles by Emilie Hallard
Texts by Judith Butler, Antonio Centeno, Virginie Despentes, Jean Kilbourne, Daria Marx, Erin McKean, Elvira Swartch Lorenzo, Nicole Seck and Julie Rambal.
First limited edition of 500 copies Black and white soft cover with sticker
120 pages, offset color printing, 23 x 29,5 cm Papers Creative Sand et Coral Book
Design: Silvia Renda / Radial Radiant Digital retouching: Rémy Moulin
Translation and proofreading: Kali Sudhra and Claude Lemaire Prepress and Print: Nova Era
Price: 35 euros tax included
