Back from a trip to New York last year Faé A. Djéraba, visual artist and photographer, was struck by the standardization of the relations we have with each other, from one city, one country, one continent to another... the smartphone clutched in the hands, an extension of the being, the look towards a virtual box, the selfies ...
The phenomenon of social networks and the virtualization of our relationships raise questions in more than one way, especially in the way they transform us and our relationship with others.
As a user of all the dematerialized networks that technology offers us, she herself understood at that very moment how much it was transforming us and posed fundamental questions of freedom and personal identity. Hence the project VIRTUAL PEOPLE CIRCUS : Interconnected Histories was born.
This great global virtual circus, which paradoxically pushes individualism in its most outrageous aspects, has led the artist to take up the foundations of our relationship to the world, to our daily life.
The project is composed of 19 Polaroid series declined in diptychs and triptychs and poliptychs
Each of the 19 series presented by the artist goes through our human and virtual condition. It explores the human being as a social and sensitive being through the themes of encounter, friendship, self-image, seduction, emotions, childhood, theatre, music, aspirations and fears...
Through her project, Faé A. Djéraba does not take a stand against technology, which she considers to be a formidable tool at our service. Yet, for the artist, it should not substitute our virtual relationships to our identity, nor to the wonders of the tangible world.
Faé A. Djéraba has used a red mannequin as a recurring object and main character in her works, a symbol for the artist of our standardization and mirror image of the individual in mutation. The other headless white mannequins are neutral presences, metaphors of what surrounds us, which we feel but do not see. The living models are masked, their identity hidden, their behaviour uninhibited.
For the artist the Polaroid (IMPOSSIBLE I-1 and Instax ) is an extension of her imagination. The use of this instant photo film reveals itself as a surprise with each cliché, which must be accepted as it is.
Territory is also a very important subject for Faé A. Djéraba. The Italo-Franco-Tunisian artist has been living in Italy for 30 years, in Finale Ligure in Liguria, which is the stage of her interior theatre. Each of her series has been realized in a specific place that the artist explores regularly.
During the difficult period we are going through, this virtual world has proved to be precious to keep the link with our loved ones, to develop creative forms of solidarity... However, this forced confinement has made us feel, perhaps for a long time, the compelling need to be with the other. For the artist "We owe it to ourselves to live in our time and to find this balance, satisfying and respectful of the individual and our environment."
Marie-Cécile Berdaguer - Margalit Berriet
curators