The make up table
In the foreground, layed out on the table, are the great expectations and effort a woman is expected to go through to look her best. There is also a hidden photo and a note from her lover, while she smokes and dominates, hides, confuses the men in the background. They are in her boudoir, her territory, symbolised by the snake on the wall. This free woman, who plays and strikes like one of the boys is dangerous: it is a play on the noir femme fatale, the one who doesn't fit in a box and thus must always be destroyed. Because what was more frightening than a woman who can destroy instead of bare life into the world? Is she still seen as a menace?
Claire André
Claire André is inspired by archive footage of my great great uncle and aunt, in the Limousin, France. This painting, depicting my two relatives, my great great aunt on the steps, her husband in the foreground. She, almost hovering shyly above the step, her frame made narrower by her demeanour, he, extending himself over the gate, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette, spreading himself in the foreground. A hidden third party holding the bar behind him. They almost don’t seem to share the same reality, she inside the gate, looking out, enveloped by the black of the door behind her, framed by the fence, while he, on the other side, in the outside world, looking at a far away object, a limitless horizon. They are in the same picture while inhabiting two very different worlds.
Frenzy
Frenzy is inspired by noir films and their depiction of women. They oscillate between an asexual housewife to a dangerous corrupting femme fatale, a spiderwoman ensnaring the men around her. Women are shown in fact, as two things, a wife or a danger to society. Frenzy shows neither, it plays with the ambiguity, this seemingly shy woman, looking down. An almost hidden hand coming to grasp her, or is it to merely tap her on the shoulder? Is she a prey, is she nothing at all? We find ourselves suspended, not knowing, not being able to categorise her, the hand. It is an invitation to imagine, to think of her story, not as one thing or another, but the infinite possibilities of what she might be.
The make up table, 70x100cm
Claire André, 42x59,4cm
