︎︎︎ Watch out ︎︎︎ 

For this series of self-portraits created in 2023, I explored strategies of over-identification. These are creative strategies used by groups in situations of domination. Their goal is to reclaim dominant aesthetics and push them to the extreme. By artificially exaggerating them, they allow for mockery and render them obsolete.

The uniform is a regulated and contractualized garment. It unites the team, serves as a work tool, and directly impacts employee productivity. The lower a worker is in the hierarchy, the stricter, more complete, and more defined their attire is. The uniform is a deep marker of class in the workplace. Based on this observation, I chose to stage myself wearing work uniforms that I found on the street or purchased in second-hand stores. My goal was to subvert iconic figures from art history. I thus recreated four major works representing figures of power : Michelangelo’s David, commissioned by a trade guild in Florence; Napoleon, a symbol of state and imperial power; Louis XIV, the embodiment of absolute monarchy; and Adam and Eve in the Sistine Chapel, representing religious authority.

Art history has largely been shaped by commissions from patrons, churches, and heads of state, making it a realm of power in its own right. In 2018, sociologist Monique Pinçon-Charlot, who studies dominant elites, already emphasized the importance of demonstrating in these symbolic spaces. Inspired by this idea, I used parody, caricature, and satire forms of expression historically linked to social and labor struggles to question the invisibility of workers.