COMME UN CHIEN QUI DANSE

Curated by Christian Bernard, the exhibition unfolds in the form of a visual and thematic narrative, bringing together over 80 of the artist’s pieces, both historic and previously unseen, offering an intimate look at her work around the image and its plastic and political issues.
The ironic dimension of the title, borrowed from Virginia Woolf’s book Une chambre à soi*, fully expresses her awareness as a woman artist, and sets the tone for an exhibition in which the incongruous and extravagant are treated with the utmost seriousness.

From the first historical pieces (1993-1998), to the most recent series of fairy brides(Les humeurs des fées, 2020-21), including work devoted to Brazilian actress Carmen Miranda, a legendary figure in Hollywood cinema in the 1940s, representations of the feminine inhabit the exhibition, often disquieting, always ambiguous. Through interventions on distinctive identity markers, capillary and clothing envelopes, vehicles and symbols of the masquerades of femininity, through the exploration of dedicated roles and normative models – bride, mother, princess, actress, dancer, etc. – By subverting injunctions to beauty, youth or thinness, Natacha Lesueur seeks to reveal, not without humor, the manifestations of the expression of a social and cultural constraint. Pompous hairstyles, accessorized hair, XXL make-up and dietary hairpieces are recurring enigmas in the tableaux-récits exhibited at Villa Médicis.

Comme un chien qui danse also goes beyond the boundaries of the photographic medium to explore other aspects of Natacha Lesueur’s artistic production: ceramic sculpture-fountains, earthenware vases, drawings and video works punctuate the exhibition, in dialogue with the photographic series, as a way of questioning the experience of the image and the fixity of forms.

Enigmatic figures of fairies and brides, or familiar feminine portraits that expose themselves to the eye while at the same time evading it: Comme un chien qui danse offers a personal and cultural feminine genealogy of the artist, “a multiple oeuvre, unfolding in a journey punctuated by her singular uses of the strange and ambiguous”, to quote curator Christian Bernard.

*In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf quotes Nick Greene and Samuel Johnson, who say of a woman who acts, preaches, composes – in short, who engages in any intellectual activity – that she reminds them of a dancing dog: “the result is not conclusive, but one is surprised that it exists”.

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CATALOG

Catalog of the exhibition by Natacha Lesueur, “Comme un chien qui danse”
Edited by Christian Bernard, Walden n (2021)
€ 30
ISBN: 978-2-9575515-3-8
Texts by Christian Bernard and Sam Stourdzé
Trilingual edition (French / Italian / English)
176 pages (ill.)

With the support of Galerie Eva Vautier and House Of Chappaz

On sale at Villa Medici and online

The Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis would like to thank its sponsors and partners:

Main sponsor
AMUNDI

Patrons and partners
ACADÉMIE DES BEAUX-ARTS, FONDATION LOUIS ROEDERER
GROUPAMA, SOFITEL, AIR FRANCE, CULINARIES, CLUB CRIOLLO, VALRHONA, FABRIZIO FIORANI

Media partner
INSIDE ART

With the support of VILLA ARSON for the production of the vases presented in the exhibition.