L'extimité

“The unveiling of the interiority to others constitutes a recurring phenomenon in the practice of numerous artists, nevertheless this will to project its mental space does not systematically considers the dialogue that settles with the audience. For her first personal exhibition at Vidéochroniques, Joy Lavigne addresses* directly this notion of Extimacy by transposing this process beyond the binary structures of internal and external in order to deploy identity as a porous and constantly evolving material. Really conceptualized by the psychiatrist Serge Tisseron following Lacan, this social mechanism is defined as the disposition to extend one’s relationship to the otherness and to the world by sharing its inner self – a psychic room, or the secret garden now exposed. It is so around that state of transition, during which the self appropriates and transforms the elements of the environment that surrounds it, that the works of that young artist are articulated. In fact, her apprehension of the habitat is manifested through diverse forms, like one the fields which characterizes particularly the expression of this interiority. Starting from the idea of gestation assimilated to the first universal experience of living/sheltering others, the metaphor of the mobile and modulable body, becoming the receptacle housing of the fetus, is put in relation with the idea of encampment. One discovers it in Where did you begin, in particular through the tent of latex, similar to a gestational bag. Indeed, by the diffusion of a frequency that corresponds to the threshold of intra-uterine auditory perception, the coating of this membrane-like structure acts as a contact surface filtering the interior and the exterior. In addition, many elements abolishing the border of the interior-exterior couple are scattered, in this case with the work on the eggs which come to connect the whole of the installation, but also in the floral arrangements sometimes implanted in the architecture of the space. It is really in the Hortus Conclusus that these notions of limit and interface are revolutionized by the activation of a system of foggers in the expographic frame. Revealed by the trickling of water, the lettering signifying the “enclosed garden” encompasses an iconographic theme of sacred art associating the figure of Mary with enclosed exteriors in the medieval period, spaces adjoining churches or monasteries. The religious aesthetics is also used in the construction of the Arch, nevertheless it is not only a question of stylistic aspect: the concept of passage is studied in itself producing an effect of initiatory rite with the scent triggered by the crossing of the audience. Then there is the burnt Prie-Dieu, questioning the communication with the beyond and the way in which this piece of furniture translates the internalization of religion. In spite of appearances, this object dialogues directly with the cathode ray antenna, as well as the various technological tools from which Julie Lavigne draws her inspiration, since ineluctably it is about seizing multiple physical or psychic extensions in order to question their interaction. Her critical view on the Transhumanist and Cyberfeminist movements then attempts to create a dialogue between organic and mechanical elements by placing the otherness in an emotional relationship. Thus, the work on scents is part of a similar process where the visitor’s memory merges with the themes convened by Joy Lavigne. The Plexiglas coffin diffusing the scent of embalming completely symbolizes this transitory state, from the decomposition of an organism until its disappearance. In the end, the body is practically not represented, yet its absence becomes omnipresent since it articulates the whole exhibition. The installation Judith gives a remarkable echo of it: by repeating the postures of traditional pictorial scenes of combat, only the bas reliefs of swords remain in resuming by the exact position of their composition. By questioning the link of the human being to the protection and the construction of barriers, this piece seems to discuss then directly the concept of Extimacy while being inscribed historically in the cell of our collective memory.”