Her exhibition “Started from the body” at the Richard Taittinger gallery on the Lower East Side is a snub to the myth of the perfect female body.
Charlotte Abramow, 28-year-old Belgian artist discovered by the famous photographer Paolo Roversi, should have been present last month at the opening of her first major exhibition in New York. The event took place at the Richard Taittinger gallery , great-grandson of the founder of the champagne brand, specializing in contemporary art. But health constraints prevented her from flying. She had to make do with a “visio-varnishing”. Last week, she was finally in Manhattan with her manager and companion Arthur Catton to see her works exhibited. Meet.
“Unstable Balance”
©
Charlotte Abramow
What is the message of this exhibition?
Charlotte Abramow. It is a critique of the myth of the perfect female body, a reflection on capitalism which imposes standards on us to sell products. The exhibition is designed as a chronological journey of the evolution of the female body, from adolescence to old age. Among those that I photographed naked, there is this young woman who performs a handstand with this absurd skirt that covers her face while her buttocks are exposed: this photo, entitled “unstable equilibrium” is a snub to the ambient hypersexualization. There’s also 82-year-old Claudette Walker, who was thrilled to pose nude. I found her through a senior modeling agency. The picture is beautiful. Claudette is today the image of the pub for the vaccination campaign once morest the Covid, and I am delighted. This is the power of photography.
Claudette Walker
©
Charlotte Abramow
How did you come up with the idea for this exhibition?
By falling on a video where Michel Foucault reads his text “the utopia of the body” in 1966. He speaks of the body as of a prison. The gaze of others locks us in, causes discomfort, and in the end, a lot of waste. This is what I want to show in this exhibition.
Rokhaya Diallo – Ears have walls
©
Charlotte Abramow
Does feminism, so decried by some, still have a future?
A lot of people today are scared of feminism indeed, and that’s sad. For me, feminism is a starting point. I start from the complexes that women may have in relation to their bodies to move towards more societal things. I denounce the stereotypes that are imposed on women, but also all other forms of injustice whether racial or related to sexual orientation. I thus photographed Rokhaya Diallo (journalist and activist, defender of state racism, editor’s note). She was attacked in the past by Alain Finkielkraut or Éric Zemmour, who told her a long time ago that she should not have this first name. I had him pose in front of a wall of ears, which gives this photo that I titled “The ears have walls”, a nod to Magritte’s “sky in the bird” which influences me a lot by his way of playing with the unexpected. The idea is to highlight the blinders of those who say that in France there is no discrimination related to skin color, when it is obviously a decoy. Personally, I am not an activist: being agoraphobic, I will never demonstrate. But my art is my mini-contribution to the collective awakening to the realities that lead to any form of rejection of the other.
Richard Taittinger
©
R.F.T.
