Toxic Relationships

2022

Combining image portfolio, text and extracts from conversations with the artists, this illustrated essay written for PALM, the online magazine of the Jeu de Paume, deals with the way the living and its representations adapt and mutate when in contact with toxic elements.

Incorporating these mutations in the photographic materials themselves, or using the photographic camera as an haptic rather than optical device, they merge the boundaries between image, vegetal, animal and landscape. The toxins, naturally present or induced by mankind, become a departure point for defining new relationships. These works are above all a testimony to the strength of resilience and survival within these intoxicated forms of life - and of the artist’s will to look endlessly for ways of representations that take these contaminants into account.