Exhibitions
January 2020
Mexico City, Gallery ZClub
Beyond Self Reflection
Beyond Self Reflection is a series of participatory artworks born in January 2020 in Mexico. During her 2-month residency in the country, Clémence Vazard asked Mexican women to send her a sentence that they must keep silent in order to be accepted (by society, their families, their colleagues, their spouses, their friends…). The artist received strong, powerful, audacious, heartbreaking, exasperating and moving statements that she wrote in lipstick on mirror paper stretched over a frame.
For this series of works, Clémence Vazard transforms tools of oppression into tools of expression. Her canvas is the mirror and her painting is the lipstick. These two materials dear to the artist, which represent the diktats of the beauty standards imposed on women, are here diverted to express a committed message. As everyday objects, they also respond to the artist’s desire to create an intimacy between the work of art and the spectator.
The letters of the text are written from right to left, giving the strange impression of having been written by a person on the other side of the mirror in front of which we are standing. This effect intended by the artist questions the reality of the world in which we live. A world where reality is altered, erroneous by the norms of representation that prevent us from expressing ourselves and others in all sincerity. This is the truth hidden behind the superficiality that is expressed in the works of Clémence Vazard.
Exhibitions
Septembre 2020
London, Boogie Wall Gallery