Manon Recordon

Manon Recordon
Period: 2012-2013
Occupation: Visual artist Born in 1985, lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, Manon Recordon’s work is based on photographs, which are placed in relation to each other or to texts. This documentation offers the viewer a narrative interplay between photographed or filmed forms, mainly statues or details of architectural sculptures, and references to literature. During her stay in Rome, she will continue her research into ancient heritage, the relationship between stone and memory in the urban context, and the rewriting of myth in contemporary form, particularly in relation to the history of Rome and the Villa Medici itself. “Through history, I reinterpret reality, relating figures from the past to our own historical period. My research and my will are not only to stick to the subject photographed, but to make the real and the imaginary coexist”.
“Under the guise of a nineteenth-century interest, it is ultimately contemporary concerns that shine through in this work. The motif of the fragment, much studied today, finds here a new incarnation, through an ambitious photographic practice. She unabashedly illustrates Friedrich Schlegel’s dictum: Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many of the works of the modern are fragments from the moment of their birth. The fragment becomes a working tool, a way of appropriating history to better speak of the present, of individualism, of a relationship with the collective in the throes of decay. Like Pierre Nora in his Lieux de Mémoire, Manon Recordon seems intent on reviving a collective feeling by addressing our intimate relationship with the memory-stone.” Isabelle Alfonsi.