thresholds
work in progress since 2016
photography
fine art inkjet print on cotton paper
charcoal drawing on pape
” It’s that showing humanity would, on this occasion, be an indignity. A moral failing “
Dominique Baqué
“What happens when there is a ‘wall’ between us?
In this work, I seek to reveal the ‘walls’ that separate us.
I carry out an extensive photographic documentation of the ‘walls’ of Paris.
Through technical choices and a pre-established protocol,
the ‘wall’ is isolated by an extreme frontality and framing.
The images show only large surfaces of ‘walls’
that eradicate any figure.
Each image is a close-up portrait of a ‘wall’.
They reveal contemporary chaos — the movement of exclusion within our society,
the return to feudal conditions in social relations.
The “wall” is the symbol of societies in ruins.
Omnipresent, it imposes itself physically and conceptually on our ordinary lives.
It is a political construction that separates, imprisons,
prevents passage, prevents vision, and hides differences.
‘Walls’ articulate physical and metaphysical limits; borders established as forces (dynamis).
In urban space there are walls, partitions, and countless barriers
and obstacles that are also ‘walls’.
Some are solidly built, others equally solid, despite being internalized.
Whether institutional, social or self-imposed barriers, the ‘wall’ is the most visible sign.
So far, this work has been limited to dealing with the urban context and has only been developed in Paris. (Of course, the reflection goes much further…)
Although the pre-established protocol that guarantees the conceptual and aesthetic principles of this research is restrictive, this work already contains a corpus of more than 300 images, organized in the series that structures the visual syntax.”
Although the pre-established protocol that guarantees the conceptual and aesthetic
principles of this research is restrictive, this work already contains a corpus of more than 300
images, organized in the series that structures the visual syntax.”
Dominique Baqué, Pour un nouvel art politique – de l’art contemporain au documentaire, Paris,
Flammarion, 2004, pp. 187-188