Until August 8 and as part of the Nuit des images on June 22, Photo Elysée in Lausanne is offering an exhibition focused on extraordinary portraits by photographer Cindy Sherman. The American artist uses parts of her face to create various characters, using digital technology.
These are large female portraits that are both very familiar and mysterious, grotesque creatures with faces composed of details from different heads: the portraits signed by the American photographer Cindy Sherman and currently exhibited at Photo Elysée, in Lausanne, form an assemblage of huge noses, mouths with offbeat, even carnivorous smiles, strange hairstyles and even rather crudely painted eyebrows.
All in star poses that remind us of our selfies, trying to give the best version of ourselves. In this exhibition on view until August 8 and during the Nuit des images at Plateforme 10 on June 22 (read box), all the defects are highlighted and make up a very disturbing whole.
Since her beginnings in the 1970s, Cindy Sherman, born in 1954, has been interested in human representation. In her first series, “Untitled” (1977), she shows a series of stereotypical women that one might encounter in B-movies: the vamp, the housewife or even the young student. The artist is fascinated by popular culture and the media through which the game of self-representation is increasingly present.
The staging of oneself
The artist will develop all of her work on these questions, using herself for all these images. However, these are not self-portraits. “From the beginning, Cindy Sherman has used her own body to create different characters, it’s not her that we see. The cross-dressing side is very interesting. Fifty years ago, she was inspired by cinema and all that popular culture which inspired us a lot, today its reference is social networks, the selfie”, indicates Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of Photo Elysée, in the Vertigo show on June 17.
At 70, the artist continues to explore the question of the roles that society offers us or imposes on us. She diverts them by offering us a distorting, powerful and disturbing mirror. “For half a century, Cindy Sherman has been talking about the weight of this culture which encourages us to take roles and offers us models, underlines Nathalie Herschdorfer. This was already the case in her first series around cinema. [Aujourd’hui], I think she takes this thinking a little further by showing to what extent everything is manufactured. This world of images in which we navigate, even if we want to believe in it, is in reality only a fiction.
Radio subject: Florence Grivel
Web adaptation: mh
“Cindy Sherman”, Photo Elysée, Lausanne, until August 8, 2024.
La Nuit des images, Plateforme 10, Lausanne, June 22, 2024.
