Quarantined Saliva (Les Sentiments océaniques)

Installation view
Art au Centre #6, Liège, 2021

The hagfish is an anguilliform sea-dwelling animal that uses sea water to produce a type of mucus to defend itself. It releases a chemical substance through a row of pores on its sides. These chemicals immediately react with the sea water to form a filamentous mucus. When the predator inhales this product, it suffocates. To protect itself from its own mucus, the hagfish wraps itself in a knot which it then slides along the length of its body to wipe it off.

It is this material, which protects as much as it kills, that forms the starting point of this installation, and the nature of the photographic montage that composes it. It is common in my work for painting, sculpture and photography to be brought into dialogue through iconographic bodies of work originating in different places. Here, the frame of a painting becomes a sculpture, the photo becomes a set, each medium supporting the other.

Quarantined Saliva questions the ambiguous relationship we have with bodily fluids. Repulsive, they are nevertheless at the heart of many beliefs, and the best way to represent and question bodies and their interiority. They evoke brilliance, cyclical movement, serve as a metaphor for the expression of our emotions, and possess a powerful sexual character. They can be gentle or toxic, revealing an intimacy that spills out; an intimacy that is isolated by this window display that nevertheless enhances it.

Mixyne, print on blueback, 250x220cm approx., 2021
Sans Titre, oil on canvas, ceramic, 38x26x5cm, 2020
L'Envol du cygne, oil on canvas, 160x120cm 2020/2021