Charlotte Dualé at Parliament

Artist: Charlotte Dualé

Exhibition title: Impuzzibil

Venue: Parliament, Paris, France

Date: March 25 – May 14, 2022

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Parliament, Paris

Parliament Gallery is pleased to present the ninth exhibition of its programming, Impuzzibil, by the artist Charlotte Dualé, from March 25 to May 14, 2022.

“She is blindfolded, sawed, set on fire, flipped, vanished, mutilated, shot, objectified, paraded and stuffed into boxes… (…) The audience came to see her tonight, and the applause is hers alone. She is not the assistant—she is the magician.”¹

Having been confronted with images of magic shows on the internet or on television, the artist Charlotte Dualé wanted to cultivate a reflection on the illusion, the relationship to the body, and the domination over it that the patriarchal society perpetuates. Épinal’s images of the magic show are certainly those of the white rabbit coming out of a black hat or playing cards, but they are also, and mainly, all those of the women who are cut in a box or who are made to disappear from the stage. In these magic tricks, the woman is relegated to the role of assistant, glamorous and sexy, smiling and playful, to whom the star magician will subject a large amount of physical abuse, certainly illusory, but symbolically explicit. The magic show then becomes a staging of male desire, of his domination over women transformed into passive and obedient objects. To produce these illusions, their bodies are thus cut, manhandled, pierced, contorted: they will and must submit only to the will and powers of the Magician Man.

Usually, during a magic trick, the point of view imposed on the spectator is what allows the fruition of the illusion. Here, on the contrary, the medium of sculpture makes it possible to go against this unique vision by offering the spectator the possibility of apprehending the behind the scenes, which is traditionally concealed.

IMPUZZIBIL is an exhibition in three parts, constituted of ceramic sculptures. This primary, mythological material, perfectly testifies to the fragile, fixed and malleable characteristics of our bodies, used for many centuries in all cultures and at all times, also giving it an infinitely multiple and powerful character.

The first act of IMPUZZIBIL is a composition of several coloured ceramic tubes, resembling both prostheses and dismembered body parts. Nailed to the wall in a waiting position, the ensemble is part of aesthetics reminiscent of bondage or torture: it embodies the control and enslavement of the body.

In the second act, the tubes are placed in boxes as in the magic tricks. The bodies, previously chained, now shatter, they bend, break, crack, wear themselves out, contort, hide, seek to disappear as much as to insert themselves into the physical and mental space that is imposed on them.

However, the seriousness of these first two acts is contrasted by the bright colours that adorn the ceramics. Because magic shows remain, whatever the violence of the symbolism they produce, entertainment. Charlotte Dualé approaches this ambivalence through a playful approach, playing on shapes, colours and materials. Magic is also play and the power of transformation.

The last mural piece entitled Grand Finale and representing a body that dismembers and reconstitutes itself in an infinity loop, is a proposal of an alternative resolution:

Wouldn’t the fragmentation of the self be the opportunity for a reconstruction that would thus be chosen? A reconfiguration of identity specific to each?

And it is perhaps here that the magic really arises: in an act that transforms domination into freedom, destruction into creation, violence into reparation.

Charlotte Dualé (1982, Paris) lives and works in Berlin. Her recent exhibitions include: Entre aide, Institut français, Berlin (2021); Thongues of Time, Villa Romana, Florence (2021); Drawing Wow, Kunstsaele, Berlin (2020); Txt, Galerie Noah Klink, Berlin (2019), and participated in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf in 2019, Further Thoughts on Earthy Materials, GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (2018).

¹ Bruns, Laura C. and Zompetti, Joseph P. (2014) The Rhetorical Goddess: “A Feminist Perspective on Women in Magic”. Journal o f performance magic. Pp. 8-39

Charlotte Dualé, Impuzzibil, 2022, exhibition view, Parliament, Paris

Charlotte Dualé, Untitled, 2015-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic, 96x21x21 cm; Two standing, 2015-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic, 75x21x10 cm

Charlotte Dualé, Curtain call, 2013-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic, 78x19x23 cm

Charlotte Dualé, Untitled, 2015-2022, glazed porcelain and ceramic, 68x24x14 cm; Untitled, 2013-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic, 82 x 21 x 14 cm; Untitled, 2015-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic, 78 x 15 x 8 cm

Charlotte Dualé, Mismad, 2015-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic, 159x27x16 cm; Standing blue, 2015-2022, glazed ceramic and ceramic and porcelain, 82x9x8 cm