In my eyes, when I look at a stone, a visual analogy occurs, I see similarities with the texture of flesh, raw flesh. I can’t explain it, it just happens, I recognise an in-between texture. My favourite definition of analogy is by Michel Foucault; it is ‘a tension never calmed between the two sides of an abyssal valley’ which provides ‘a wonderful fight of resemblances’. Since I started to see analogies between flesh and stones, I have never ceased to find a way to make the two textures merge together, to create a world of my own based on reality. By transgressing differences, being able to extrapolate, I find a coherence. The body as a landscape and the landscape as a body.

It is all about poetry.

Inside our bodies there is no light, everything lives in darkness. For me, getting inside the human body is just the same as entering into an unknown cave, you need to have the same desire, the same courage and determination. You might get lost, all your landmarks are confused, you don’t know if your body is going to be hurt ... you become an explorer.

Inside your body you discover your organs, all slimy and colourful, shapeless. They are all very disgusting, right? They are abject; the very sight of them makes you feel nauseated. Let’s not even talk about your intestines and the making of our excrement ... abject objects are repulsive and there is no way we want them to be part of our lives even though we can’t escape from them. Abjection is denying the very process of living.

Stones or mountains are not abject, they are shapeless indeed, but beautiful, respectable, not like spit or a pancreas.

Both organic and mineral objects are natural.

 

 

 

I confront these two natural kinds of objects and at the same time they tend to merge together. The series of digital photographs, Attempting the Embrace n°25, were taken on the top of the Eldfell volcano on the Heimaey island in Iceland. They are close-ups of pieces of flesh or organs and lava stones. They are quite large in size, creating a corporeal relationship with the viewer. By loosing the real scale of the picture, the natural elements are perceived differently, they create a new vocabulary of forms and textures. It is a way to demonstrate a new perspective on a visual reality that I have created.

I also work with ceramics, a material I feel a deep connection to, because they are made from earth, they are in their composition both organic and mineral at the same time. Even if I create imaginary, ambiguous natural objects in ceramic, they feel real to me in a way because of this relationship I have with the material.

Let’s go on a great journey through our mouth; an expressive volcano, deep inside the inner kingdom to the outer encompassing landscape. Let’s enter in the ABJECT we are made of, let’s merge with shapelessness, let’s dive into the flow of the blood river and get carried away.