Pavillon (2004) – Unseen

“Other people’s feelings are also my own…”(2003) is a photographic and video work in progress. In these double portraits depicting myself, the artist, and the sitter side by side, I strive to research as closely as possible the inner posture and emotion of the sitter. For me, these portraits are about the way we inhabit each other, reside in each other, and how we always leave traces in each other. They go against the grain of the squeaky clean’individual’, idealized in our capitalist system, the alienated vehicle targeted for consumption, that generates the fear of the other. I interpret the other’s emotion to blur the dividing line between sitter and artist, to counter the usual game of representation in the tradition of portraiture, as the interpretation is made physically manifest within myself, the artist. It is not about mimetism but empathy. It is not about extreme emotions but nuances of apparent normality. It is above all a celebration of you and I, right here, right now and forever ; an attempt to get beyond representation, artefact, and interface.

Pavilion is an architectural structure that allows the projection of these portraits on the inside wall of a large circular space which has, at its centre, another smaller circular space where the spectators can meet. A luminous surface covers the central space, which permits the spectator to dissociate himself from his shadow.