Hollywood Nightmares (self-portraits)

Death, violence and dementia haunt these images inspired by studio portraits of actresses and actors from the golden age of Hollywood and European cinema of the 1930s to 1950s, which I admire and collect. While staying true to the almost liturgical aesthetic that presented these 20th century icons bathed in glorious light, I added to the portraits some horrific touches: an actor covered in blood; a glamorous actress who seems to have been strangled; a collection of faces lost in confusion or denying their pain. In the autumn of 2020, I experienced two personal tragedies simultaneously: the sudden death of a parent suffering from a neurodegenerative disease and a disastrous professional experience during work on a film in France. After my return to London, I started working on a new series of self-portraits expressing a double mourning: the disappearance of a loved one as well as that of an idealized vision of film production. These characters are victims who have arrived at the top with dirty hands, sometimes forgetting themselves in an illusion of grandeur created by the industry's most cynical producers. Produced spontaneously and on my own, this work documents my attempt to accept, not without violence, the passage of time. It's a new exercise around nostalgia and denial. Hollywood Nightmares shows the discomfort produced by the loss of what ne takes for eternal and pure, in both life and art, while still seeking, amongst the mess and sordidness, the signs of a light.