She Remembers No Longer: Just Who Loved Her
2021
Prints of 15 photograms on paper, glued to billboard, and gold leaf.
This work was commissioned by Joseph Farine for the Andata Ritorno Gallery, as part of the I LOVE #ArtisteDici project, supported by the FMAC (Municipal Fund for Contemporary Art). This intervention on billboards in the heart of the city of Geneva was made possible thanks to a budget to support cultural actors in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis.
It is an ephemeral work, produced live and inspired by a poem by René Char, in which the narrator evokes a lost love. Three couples, taken from an anonymous amateur film from the 1930s, kiss under the same tree. The action is divided into five photograms leading up to the final kiss. The work is covered with gold leaf, fluttering in the wind.
In the streets of the city is where my love is. Where she goes in divided time matters to none. She’s no longer my love; any may speak with her. She remembers no longer: just who loved her?
She seeks her peer among desirous gazes. The space she traverses is my faithfulness. She generates hope and lightly rejects it. She has pride of place with no skin in the game.
I inhabit her depths like the happiest wreck. Unknown to her, my solitude is her treasure. In the broad daylight where her blossoming takes place, my freedom deepens it.
In the streets of the city is where my love is. Where she goes in divided time matters to none. She’s no longer my love; any may speak with her. She remembers no longer: just who loved her and lights her from afar, so she suffers no fall?
René Char
Extract from Éloge d’une Soupçonnée – Poetry / Gallimard