Revenir – Coming Back by Florine Thiebaud at Bastione delle Maddalene

Revenir is the next exhibition of the artist Florine Thiebaud, curated by Erik Kessels that will take place in Bastione delle Maddalene from 20 September.

Overview

In 2025, the artist photographed herself during moments of crisis and exhaustion related to depression—experiences that deeply isolated and affected her. At first, this photographic act stemmed from a need to feel real again, as she was growing increasingly disconnected from both reality and her own body. Intuitively sensing that it could evolve into a deeper visual project, she continued taking these self-portraits during crisis, in the intimacy of her room, for almost a year: sometimes finding the strength, sometimes not.

Her artistic practice has long engaged with themes such as isolation and identity. Here, on her bed—the place where one tends to hide, and where loneliness gathers its weight—she revisits these themes from a new perspective. Using her own body as a ground for exploration, she engages with conceptual aesthetics often associated with male artists. Yet here, she places herself—a woman—at the center, photographing herself in her most vulnerable states. Her direct gaze into the camera introduces self-awareness and confrontation. If existence unfolds through the gaze of the Other, here the Other is also herself—both in front of and behind the camera.

With this inner transformation taking place, each portrait becomes a fragment of a puzzle, reflecting how reclaiming her image and body—especially when they feel out of control—shapes her understanding of self. In doing so, she captures not only the rawness of her experience but also the resilience that emerges from confronting and sharing it.

About Florine Thiebaud

Born in 1992, Thiebaud is a French photographer now based in Marseille, practicing a post-documentary approach that blends photography and writing, with a strong focus on publishing.

From 2016 to 2019, they developed two projects focused on the consequences of waiting for papers for exiled people in Greece, placing the relationship with the other at the heart of their practice. The first was the project Exils, which won the Roger de Conynck Prize and was exhibited at the Recylart Gallery in Brussels, followed by Breaking Point. The latter was co-published as a book in May 2022 with Stockmans Art Books and was exhibited at FOMU in Antwerp and at the Contretype Gallery in Brussels as part of the .TIFF selection and Propositions d’Artistes.

Developing reflections on notions of imprisonment and isolation and their consequences, they are currently working on a project about the families of incarcerated people, Des Ondes (On Waves), based on a personal story. This project has received support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, and part of it was already exhibited in 2023 at the Delta Cultural Center in Namur as part of a group exhibition.

In parallel, following confrontations with their own physical and mental limits while facing depression, they developed a new series of self-portraits: Revenir (Coming back). Using once again repetitive imagery and a consistent aesthetic, they explore the intersection of vulnerability, isolation, and transformation through self-portraiture. Photographing themselves during moments of crisis and depression, they seek to capture the disconnect between the inner world and reality.