Avant l'après - Corona Diaries

Between the old and the new world there was confinement. Almost two months of confinement. Sometimes internment. Stay home, we were told Be patient, we were told Be reasonable, we were told Be creative, we were told Locked up with my son Basil, forcibly alone with him, I made these images. Around him, an assemblage of objects found here and there in my flat, where the photos were taken. Objects floated by the tide of memories, a family archaeology arranged around this companion of isolation. There are souvenirs of travels, shells and starfish collected in Madagascar, Marrakech or Hyères, a voodoo doll brought back from Belize, a 24 year old orange, a pine cone picked up on a beach in Brittany on my 50th birthday. But also a paper straitjacket and a breastplate of dried corn leaves, collected in a field almost 30 years ago with the idea of making a lampshade out of them, which never saw the light of day. And a plaster cast of Basil's hand as a child. The shadow of the Contessa di Castiglione hovers over us with the help of a plane tree bark transformed into a wolf. There is also a batch of dismembered porcelain dolls, collected in a second-hand shop. To these relics are added the accessories that are in the news: a protection mask, rubber gloves, a white coat and biology laboratory glasses. Between suffocation and dreams of escape, floating and withdrawal, a muddy mood and the need to act, an inner fog evaporates. 18 April - 10 May 2020