MInuit brûle
Midnight burns
(2022 - on going)
In 2015, I was beaten up in the street in Bordeaux because I was identified as a lesbian. When I went to the police station to file a complaint, the policeman told me it happened because of the full moon. This event is the starting point for Midnight Burns, a transmedia project combining experimental photography, poetry, ceramics and video, where I explore my trauma, the night and my feeling of rage. I am interested in how trauma can shape and define an individual, in both destructive and transformative ways.
Midnight Burns explores three cycles that are entangled: the moon cycle, the menstrual cycle and the aggression cycle. I use my menstrual blood as a matrix to alter my negatives, in this way, images become like an extension of my body from which I can work. From the altered negatives, I photographed the moon at different stages of its cycle and I also took an interest in the figure of the predator, the wolf, in relation to the feeling of being a prey in a public space. Through alteration, the images become survivors, between destruction and care, they exist despite and because of the damage they have suffered.
Furthermore, I carried out work to re-appropriate my complaint. I saw it as a document that had frozen my experience in a set of sentences that did not reflect the injustice and indifference I faced. I had in mind the engravings of Gustave Doré for the strong presence of the night, the suggestion of violence and fear. With The Wolf and the Sheep, I took all the documents associated with the filing of the complaint, I anonymized them, covered them with cyanotype liquid and exposed them to light to reveal the engraving. As the complaint sheets are thin, going through cyanotype makes them very fragile. Some letters fade, the paper wrinkles, making these documents vulnerable, just as I was when I filed a complaint.
Cette nuit-là j’ai été une proie
Il faut croire que ça se voyait dans mon corps
Alors quand la police m’a dit que
la seule explication à mon agression
était la pleine lune
J’ai cru mourir une seconde fois
Comme s’il n’y avait rien qui pouvait
expliquer les violences homophobes
Comme si nous n’étions pas
des centaines chaque année à être
battu·e·s*, mis·e·s dehors, tué·e·s
Alors oui je ne sais pas me taire,
Garder le silence n’a jamais
permis de guérir
À l’intérieur de moi, il y a
un puits de rage
sans fond
Je le contemple des fois
Suite à l’agression
j’ai pu me dissocier,
J’ai cru que c’était un super pouvoir
Arriver à ne plus rien ressentir,
le vide absolu
En fait je n’arrivais plus à être entier
Celles et ceux qui ont compris
qui m’ont aidé à guérir
N’ont pas été ma famille
Ni mes ami·e·s
Mais de parfaits inconnu·e·s
Queer, comme moi
La lune n’a jamais été la coupable,
J’ai inscrit sur mon corps un talisman
La nuit fait partie de moi
Les étoiles me regardent,
je les regarde
Et la lune me protège
That night, poem (2022)