Franco British artist living in Paris
La Dernière Impératrice unfolds as a quiet dialogue with the history of
image-making — from the intimate interiors of the Nabis and the
patterned hush of Vuillard, to the psychological intensity of Bacon, and
the staged feminine archetypes explored by Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman. Rooted in the literary sensibility of Bloomsbury, the
photographic modernity of Camera Work, and a thread of Surrealism that
gently disturbs the surface, this work lets these currents brush against one
another in its atmosphere. The early decades of the twentieth century — a
time of shifting identities and modernist rupture — form its tonal spine.
Here, softness is permitted to coexist with the uncanny. A considered
palette, cinematic stillness, couture-like composition, and the grain of
early photography shape a visual language attentive to presence, poise,
and the quiet artifice of self. The camera becomes less a mirror than a
small stage: a space where a figure may be constructed, edited, disguised,
and revealed — sometimes all at once.
I turned the lens upon myself to explore the subtle place where an image
of a woman is formed, and to reclaim that authorship from within. The
self-portrait became both subject and material; not a confession, but a craft— a quiet passage into a parallel world, where I could shape my own
reality.
At the heart of La Dernière Impératrice lies a meditation on sovereignty
— a private, interior form. The “Empress” is not a gesture of grandeur, but
a metaphor of self-possession: a woman composing her own myth, and
occupying the frame with intention rather than permission.
