Room text by Clarissa Fornara (Co-director) and Azul Joliat (Art Historian)
Translated from French to English
The mere mention of Club Dorothée (French television programme aimed at young people in the ‘90s), Dragon Ball or Naruto resonates with fervour for a whole generation. In fact, since the ‘70s, Japanese anime, in constant exchange with the world of manga and video games, has been spreading like wildfire in the West. Today, the otaku – the name given to people with a passion for this type of sedentary activity – is no longer a strange, isolated being. On the contrary, it has become a way of life in its own right, with a wealth of narrative, artistic and social content. Beneath their light-hearted or fantastical appearances, these works are in fact captivatingly complex, full of double meanings and contemporary reflections on issues such as gender, social cohesion and formative narratives. Born of a Japanese tradition combining humour and absurdity, manga readily alternates tones, from the serious to the caricatured, from the explanatory to the dramatic. This dual register fuels the identification process, particularly among young audiences.
By reappropriating the codes of this medium, Simone Nicola Filippo pays tribute to this particular world and its aesthetic, while at the same time drawing attention to some of the issues it raises. It’s all in the title. ‘Tour Bonheur’ [French, = Joyous Tower, or Happiness lap] not only recalls the joys experienced by the author-gamer during his virtual journeys, but also constitutes a pointed reference to the Pokémon universe; a secret and difficult-to-access dungeon that only a seasoned player is likely to find. In choosing this name, in making Quartier Général his tower of happiness, the artist has also crystallised a central element in his thinking: the disappearance of the boundary between the fictional and the concrete. In the exhibition space, there are no walls. Metal shelves take the place of picture rails, revealing the emptiness, while subtly evoking open-space layouts, where boundaries are blurred and hierarchies are hard to perceive. This scenographic gesture metaphorically (de)materialises the demarcation between the virtual world and the real world. By moving these fictitious figures into our physical reality, the painter highlights the crumbling of this boundary and the fantasies and imaginations held by and about these characters. Depicted in the form of silhouettes, reminiscent of promotional cards bearing the effigy of film stars, these figures accentuate this dimension of fan-idol fascination. This highlights the phenomenon of parasocial relationships: the emotional bonds that fans develop with fictional characters. These unilateral attachments can reveal loneliness, emotional deprivation or a form of nostalgia linked to childhood and play. They also question our relationship with unattainable desires and idealised models. Simone Nicola Filippo has selected various female figures from video and animated games to illustrate the contradictions in their representation.
At first glance, they have characteristics that seem to defy gender stereotypes, but as the narrative or the game progresses, they fall back into a standard straitjacket. From being strong, independent heroines, they strip naked to reward the player. From neutral figures, they acquire benevolent, maternal behaviour. And finally, the mother figure progresses into a hypersexualised version of herself. These characters reveal a constant tension between power and submission, autonomy and eroticism. What expectations do these developments meet? How are they received and integrated by readers and players? By exploring the tensions between fiction and reality, identification and idealisation, Simone Nicola Filippo does more than pay tribute to otaku culture – he offers a critical and nuanced reading of it. Through his aesthetic and symbolic choices, he invites us to question our relationship with the images, stories and figures that populate our collective imagination. “Tour Bonheur” then becomes not only a place for projection, but also a space for questioning the place of the virtual in our lives, the models we construct, and the way in which these fictions influence, sometimes profoundly, our identities and our emotions.
Tudor Ciurescu and César Axel, both members of the trio General Aesthetics – formed in 2023 with Simone Nicola Filippo – have been invited by the artist to take over the exhibition space. Their work and reflections revolve around common themes: the dynamics of digital spaces, the aesthetics of online communities and the world of anime.
Commentary by Noor Diba, artist, art historian and friend of Simone Nicola Filippo
Translated from French to English
Named after one of Simone Nicola Filippo’s early paintings, the “Tour Bonheur” exhibition finds its essence in the Pokémon saga. With a nod to the world of the famous Japanese trainers, the artist invites us to travel through the levels that make up her own artistic world. Initially entitled “Joyous Tower” (2022), this painting is the starting point for a mini-series of canvases, the fruit of the artist’s sleepless nights, tinted by the blue glow of her computer screen.
Like a Pokémon arena, the space is structured and carved out by Simone’s paintings, which seem to float. If there were a theme here, it would be repetition. A copy and paste on canvas or wood, evoking the fright felt by the young artist when his precious backup was erased from his Nintendo cartridge by a friend at the time. It was on that day that the beginnings of his research into multiplication were born. How do you represent the memory of players who have now been erased? Here, the characters exist in different ways, sometimes even identically, staring into the distance and clasping their hands over their stomachs. The notion of the double portrait, explored in particular in a quartet wearing skin-tight jumpsuits, refers to the idea of the evolution of video game avatars.
As the tour progresses, a correspondence is created between the paintings on canvas and the paintings on wood. Sometimes drawn with adhesive tape, sometimes defined with a jigsaw, the outlines of the figures are sharp and contrasting. Outlined like PNG images, they leave the canvas and stand out against their background. In this way, “Tour Bonheur” takes us on a journey through the walls of Quartier Général, recalling the artist’s fond memories of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon cartridge he lent out on numerous occasions.
Simone Nicola Filippo short bio
Translated from French to English
SIMONE NICOLA FILIPPO (*1996) is a visual artist who mainly uses oil paint as a medium to explore themes of solitude, parasocial relationships and the post-internet. Influenced by the aesthetics of video games, animated films, card games and novels, Simone Nicola Filippo reflects on the variety of fictional representations of (non)human relationships.
He has taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions, notably with the art collective General Aesthetics, and has exhibited his work in various Swiss cantons, mainly on the independent contemporary scene, as well as internationally. His work is part of the art collections of the City of Neuchâtel, and in 2021 he was awarded an artists’ residency in Cairo, supported by the City of Neuchâtel. In 2022, he has also been selected for the Cobertizo residency in Jilotepec, Mexico. In autumn 2025, he will take up a residency in Okazaki, Japan.
He has lived in Neuchâtel since 2011 and is a graduate of HEAD Geneva (2019) and ECAL Lausanne (2021), where he won the ECAL prize in 2021.
