In her photographic series Sous la peau (Under the skin), produced during an artist residency in Rio de Janeiro at the end of 2021, beginning of 2022 at the invitation of the French Embassy in Brazil, Pauline Daniel continued her work initiated in France with and for the Food Banks on the theme “fighting waste” (Peel me, October 2014).
In Under the Skin, the photographer focuses on the aesthetic representation of fruits and vegetables that are damaged and about to be thrown away. Both during the first work sessions in France and later in Brazil, it was by dissecting the food and carrying out meticulous work in the darkness of the photo studio that the photographer sought to highlight the intrinsic flavor actual of each product. The images often constructed in diptychs offer the two possible facets of the same food; the raw side damaged then its worked version revealing its inner brilliance.
All the images are interested here in questioning the tyranny of appearances which turns out to be so misleading; once peeled and cleaned up, the blackened or necrotic fruits and vegetables turn out not only to be fit for consumption but also worthy of the tastiest dishes.
Borrowing from the register of seduction, the images raise the question of attraction and repulsion and offer a path of thought towards the notion of “Beautiful inside”.
Pauline Daniel : Sous la peau
Until August 30, 2022
Musée de la Minoterie
Route d’Allos
04170 La Mure-Argens, France
www.secrets-de-fabriques.fr
