Body Of Work

My work deals with our relationship to bodies and their representation through photography and installation. I explore photography’s three-dimensional potential in order to create physical and visceral experiences. Each of my projects relates to the photographic and references to the medium’s history, theory or practice while mixing mythologies and autobiographical elements.

Form goes hand in hand with content. Materials are carefully chosen in relation to each project’s subject matter and I use breakthrough technologies to print onto various materials, from glass, plastic or ceramics to fabric. Each work also relates to space, whether the installation is site-specific or if the project was elaborated during a residency to the location’s history and culture. They are explorations into my personal involvement with, and critical inquiry of the body, challenging notions of its cultural representations and appropriations.

My practice tries to mix both my interests in sculpture - the relationship with touch and materials, and seeing - with photography. This brought me to study the relationship between the two practices, looking at the concept of indexicality and casting in sculpture (through casting bodies) and in photography (which is known as casting with light). Both are imprints or traces of a unique moment and time.

My work goes against the forced uniformity and smoothness of photographic representations of bodies in mass media and tries to bring back an honest, universal and inclusive approach to depicting our skins, paying particular attention to deconstructing gender stereotypes.

My application consists of excerpts from my first book Bleu and installation shots from previous exhibitions.

Bleu was published in 2017 by Morel Books. The challenge was to work with my archive of images, both un-manipulated photographs and documentation of photographic sculptures, in order to translate my three-dimensional approach to photography into a book form as a sculptural object itself. The book looks at the similarities between skin and the photograph: both surfaces, both fragile, both filled with secrets and taboos. The impossibility of grasping a body is inherent to the medium of photography as much as to human relationships, yet in doing both at once, the insatiable is soothed.

Installation shots include Orlando (2014), an installation composed of close-up photographic prints of my boyfriend’s skin, mediated with layers of cracked and melted wax, scanned and reprinted. Orlando questioned photography’s ability to translate intimacy as well as exploring the medium of sculpture, in its monumentality and in the rendering of flesh resembling the pink marble of antique sculptures.

From the solo show ADYTA which featured two installations I included a installation view of Heracles (2018) which stems from my interest in exploring and questioning the construction of gender. Having worked on the representation and perception of femininity previously, I have been researching and investigating masculinity, looking at both biological and socially defined factors of its construct. Muscularity is considered a particular attribute of virility, which led me to research further into bodybuilding. Cropped images of male bodybuilders’ arms taken from FLEX magazine are printed on fabric to create unique three-dimensional photographic sculptures resembling cushions, which are individually displayed on rotary barbecues, continuously turning on themselves and evoking the Greek tradition of rotisserie grilling.

As a work in production which will be exhibited in Vienna in march I included the panels for my new sculpture Maman. Maman (2019) is composed of 5 images of the my mothers’ bust printed on silky fabric. The printed fabrics are hung around a hollow, circular metal structure (measuring 2 meters in diameter); the piece invites visitors to step inside the circle, recreating an intimate experience in the public space of the museum. The photographs are displayed inside the piece. On the outside, the images correspond but allow viewers to only guess the images within. The work expands on my ongoing investigations on the topology of the female body, as well as on photography’s potential for materiality and its historical relationship with fabric. The creation of Maman takes inspiration from a baldaquin, a cloth canopy often draped over beds or a doorway to protect against the cold and, in the past, indiscreet peaking as the maids and servants would sleep in the same room. The piece also humorously sees me recreating my mother, gesturing a desire to hide back inside her and receive maternal comfort, in reaction to pacify a state of melancholy.

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Ichor, Install Shot, 2015
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Ichor, Install Shot, 2015

© Alix Marie - Wax Photographs, Install Shot, 2017
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Wax Photographs, Install Shot, 2017

© Alix Marie - Foam Talent, Install Shot, 2017
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Foam Talent, Install Shot, 2017

© Alix Marie - Orlando, Install Shot, 2014
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Orlando, Install Shot, 2014

© Alix Marie - Héraclès, Install Shot, 2017
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Héraclès, Install Shot, 2017

© Alix Marie - Adrea, 2014
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Adrea, 2014

© Alix Marie - Les Gatiantes, Install Shot, 2017
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Les Gatiantes, Install Shot, 2017

© Alix Marie - Maman, Install Shot, 2019
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Maman, Install Shot, 2019

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

© Alix Marie - Excerpt from the project Bleu
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Excerpt from the project Bleu

Latest Projects

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