Intimate Topographies

Terra Incognita (Disambiguation) 1
Giclee Print Photography on Arches Velin
Museum Rag 315mg
18 cm x 18.6 cm
2017
Copyright: Hélène Le Chatelier

A solo exhibition by Hélène Le Chatelier curated by Tan Siuli

In her solo exhibition, Hélène Le Chatelier works across a breadth of artistic mediums to explore the idea and image of the female body as a ‘terra incognita’, an ambiguous terrain open for new, and personal readings. Resisting the conventional male gaze of art history while simultaneously questioning ‘feminine’ attributes and histories, Le Chatelier’s close-up, yet abstracted forms offer up primordial, timeless landscapes. A related body of work turns on the metaphor of the Motherland, where the idea of the female body is enmeshed with notions of identity and belonging.

Drawing on her sense of dislocation as well as a distant yet ambiguous longing for this ‘motherland’, Le Chatelier laboriously erases parts of old maps of France, leaving only its rivers visible, like veins on flesh. These are maps of fading memories, and yet their regression to ‘virgin territory’ offers up a blank canvas for possibilities to be imagined anew.

Admission: Free admission – Some nudity

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