Les forces d’attraction.

Les Salaisons, Romainville.

22 November to 14 December 2014.
Natacha Ivanova, Liza Katrich, Hélène Picard, Paula Anke

Have you ever thought about Cinderella’s strength to counter the torture of her stepmother and to contrive to be a heroine rather than a slattern, about Alice’s power, trusting in her instinct to travel in this weird wonderland, about the energy like a stretched thread of Sheherazade for making up every night her salvation?

This strength is female; it is as intense as it is invisible. We do not see it, we do not know it, it does not seem to be here. It startles when we take it by surprise.
It does not have muscles, It does not impress with its shoulders, it cannot be trained at the gym. But it is sturdy like bones and buried like them.
It does not impose, it sometimes wears a mask. It wells up from under the skin, and it is as enduring as water, persistent and continuous. Its training ground is intuition, flair, instinct, emotion. It has the magnetic power of gravity and, like the force of attraction, it causes movement in everything that surrounds it.

Four women gather to expose this female energy, to give it a body, to explore it in its daily, ritual and magical events.
We make an immersive journey through the laboratory space, through the industrial cave that houses gestures, stories, ornaments, mysteries that sustain this force. As it sinks into the space of Les Salaisons, strength grows, spreads, it draws, it shakes, it almost falls, it invades us. The exhibition is the manifesto of this force and it invites the viewer to make it his own.

Natacha Ivanova, who commissioned the exhibition, paints a magical and disturbing universe. Here, using a series of wild and precious objects  she reveals the different masks of that energy  which one does not hesitate to call animal, seduction, magic and death.
Liza Katrich presents a series of photographic portraits and self-portraits, from the Hans Christian Andersen tale "The Wild Swans" which addresses the issue of sacrifice and renunciation; she tries to fix the transition from a "normal" state to a state of trance.
Hélène Picard takes the viewer for a walk into poetic spaces combining paintings and costumes. Strength is represented here by the dresses. Painted or sewn, their materials, their bulky shoulders, their sharp, important colours, assert their power. We feel their breath on our neck.
Paula Anke whose work moves between installation, video, painting and assemblage, concentrates this energy in meticulously produced  objets collecteur de mémoire or objets de transfert, a sort of survival kit to go on. Her Amazon dolls, looking like amulets, are the guides to this long distance race.

Text written by Hélène Picard.