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 file a complaint, the policeman told me that the only reason that could explain my attack was the full moon. This event is the starting point of Minuit brûle, 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, both in destructive and transformative ways.
People assigned women at birth are told to do not to go out too late, do not to come home alone, do not to answer. That night, I took all the liberties straight cis men take all the time. I use an alternative photography process which consists of soaking film in my own blood, then exposing them to the light of the moon, giving the prints a strange and threatening aspect.
In addition, I have worked on reclaiming my complaint. I saw it as a document that had frozen my experience in a set of sentences that do not reflect the injustice and indifference I faced. I had Gustave Doré’s engravings in mind for the strong presence of the night, the suggestion of violence and fear. With The Wolf and the Sheeps, 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 pages of the complaint are thin, going through the cyanotype makes them very fragile. Some letters fade, the paper wrinkles, making these pages 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)