Queue

Limite & abandon, 

Driftwood sculptures

For a long time, the sea remained a man’s affair. And to better secure the ban, we invented a superstition: "a woman is like a rabbit, on a boat, it brings bad luck ..."

In the maritime imagination, the boat is a male space, while the seas and the land are female figures, figures long equated with evil in ancient tragic literature. Passed down from generation to generation, these representations have influenced the construction of the culture and identity of seafarers.

The relationship to these two socio-symbolic spaces of the sea and the land builds the identity of the sailor-man and therefore refers to a social division of sexual roles, confining women to terrestrial space and associating marine space with male.

Excluded from ships, the woman is tolerated under a decorative repertoire, in particular with the figurehead in the guise of a mermaid. Fishtail Woman - this is the archetypal form I come to question.

I sculpt in driftwood like a sailor's hobby, tail shapes: Sometimes hook, sometimes stakes or even sextoys. I thus created a series of 15 pieces.

The figure of the mermaid allows me to explore aspects of the feminine and associated beliefs: Seductive Woman, Bloodthirsty Woman, Cursed Woman.

The woman was banished from the ships by superstition but above all because she created the discord between the men who coveted her. Her power of attraction probably making her too powerful ...