Artist: Camille Soualem
Exhibition title: Aiguiser nos larmes
Venue: Exo Exo, Paris, France
Date: January 20 – February 18, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Exo Exo
‘Fear walks with me but doesn’t lead me’
‘Aiguiser les larmes’ (Sharpen the tears) was the first title of Camille’s show. Then after talking, we decided to include us all in this movement, to throw ourselves in. It is then our tears she speaks about and the path to follow to turn them into weapons.
Because it is about us. About the necessity to look ourselves in the mirror. Except for Camille, mirrors are not instruments of the vanity or the degradation of the feminine representation, but powerful tools of reflexion. Emancipators, they allow us to confront, realize, watch and learn.
‘I hold my flaws close to my heart like a newborn’
There is a sense of resistance in Camille’s paintings, restraint and discretion. Her figures are sitting or laying in a moment of contemplation. At the same time these naked bodies exude a certain brutality, the affirmation of their physicality, their anchorage. ‘I sense something strong’, Antoine told me several times. ‘Of a naive beauty yet super deep at the same time’.
Camille’s subjects combine something profoundly intimate with something deeply rooted in others. It is in this magical space between the group and the self that her work operates. Camped in ultra classic poses, her characters seem set up in silence. However it is all about dialogues and exchanges. Warriors, men and women, wind sometimes lift up their hair as to remind us that the body is a talkative force.
What interests Camille is precisely the defense mecanisms of our bodies, our minds and our environments, both in everyday life as in the social and feminist battles. Bodies are at the core. They are territories to reconquer and fully inhabit. All around, an arid nature bathes their flesh in color with a ferocious desire for tenderness.
‘If I survive it is by making love with the elegance of great octopuses’
At the center, the table takes the shape of an anemone or an urchin. It stings if one gets too close. Limits are important. With Camille, they are mostly positive. Paintings are mirrors, objects are weapons, texts are their voices. It is the improbable dance of a fertile world hurting itself to the desert and thirst.
– Elisa Rigoulet, january 2023
