Human Alphabet

Images have the power to convey ideas across languages and cultures and can stand alone without relying on a literal translation. Today, our visual fields are filled with imagery (television to Instagram), and a literate mind unconsciously reads text without considering it. You don’t have to tell yourself to read a stop sign - you just do. From road signs and graffiti, to pop-up ads and text messages, we are constantly and instantaneously ingesting language and its message. How does the involuntary practice of reading, translating, influence the artistic practice?

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For this installation, I borrow from the scenography of our streets, whose walls are covered with posters populated by models retouched and frozen in stereotyped postures.

My characters replace the poster models, and like these, they fill the void of their lack of identity in this fictional world with coded gestures.

 

I created a visual alphabet made of sketches, taken from life, of different postures of human models.

These 26 “alphabetical” figures of moving bodies come alive with the rhythm of the artistic marathon that is La Nuit Blanche

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Many thanks to the city of Paris and all those who helped contribute to this exposition.

Hundreds of spectators came to see the performers act out this human alphabet on the night of the Nuit Blanche de Paris 2018.

A very memorable evening! More to come soon.