As Alice falls into the depths of herself in Wonderland, the narrative becomes a metaphor for the physical and psychological transformations of childhood.
It is through the most fantastical images that the full complexity of reality is expressed. This is how the work of Laura Bottereau & Marine Fiquet can be interpreted, as a long, continually re-examined dive into the world of the White Rabbit, on the border between apprehension and attraction, anxiety and scopophilic pleasure.
Bottereau & Fiquet is a French artist duo working in Nantes, currently emerging, whose works offer a theatre of the strange. For example, the white wax ex-votos in their work Spleen Spring They display their large teeth or mustache hairs, inspiring a smile. The work presents small pieces of cut-out bodies and skin, carefully hung like a trophy wall, but through laughter, the public validates and identifies with these morbid dismemberments. The old demonsChildren's games are transformed into a deliberate parody where faces are masks, hands and feet fetishistic accessories, and the central figure of the twins imposes the theme of the simulacrum. Fragments of bodies and fragments of actions constantly reappear in the artists' installations, sculptures, and photographs, flirting with the grotesque. Childhood—the artists' primary theme—appears as if frozen before the mirror stage, or in a utopian state, where the body is not understood as an independent and localized unit, but only through its relationship to the subjects and objects that surround it.
Nothing innocent, however, on the part of the artists, whose conceptual and referential discourse allows them to participate in a multifaceted visual culture, fostering fruitful interpretive possibilities. In their stagings, references to fetishes and ex-votos imbue the objects with a certain magic, a different kind of power. In the photographs, a still-life impression detaches the bodily evocation from its reality, transforming it into a site of metaphorical projection. In some installations, conceptual photography seems closely related, combining texts and images to construct individual narratives. SoliloquiesThe device is reminiscent of those by Sophie Calle, tinged with an added touch of whimsy.
The duo presents the bodies "as political archives": is this a way of evoking memory and the physical inscription of psychological events? But no doubt there are as many interpretations as there are children's stories.
Photo credits :
1: Bottereau & Fiquet, Summer Seum (excerpt) ©Adagp, Paris, 2024. Photograph: Grégory Valton
2 (left image): Bottereau & Fiquet, Spleen Spring (excerpt) ©Adagp, Paris, 2024. Photograph: Grégory Valton
3 (right image): Bottereau & Fiquet, She & L. (excerpt) ©Adagp, Paris, 2024
4: Bottereau & Fiquet, transition·e·s (excerpt) ©Adagp, Paris, 2024
