Zabo ChabilanD
Formée au Centre International de la Photographie à New York, ma pratique artistique a été également marquée par le mode de réflexion de mon père, auteur de nombreux brevets d’invention dans divers domaines. Attentif à toutes choses et toujours en quête d’en dérouler le processus de conception, il portait haut la transversalité, en s’attachant à bien dissocier dans un premier temps l’idée ou l’intuition des moyens pour parvenir à la mise en œuvre. Il ne cherchait pas le plus souvent à répondre à un « problème », l’idée ou l’intuition « surgissait » avant d’être suivie par un travail rigoureux visant à la « matérialiser ».
Mon travail multiforme, puisant dans les ressources de la photographie, de la vidéo, de l’installation et de la performance sonore et inscrit dans un espace / temps très dilué, a cherché à faire remonter le fil du processus de conception dans la phase inconsciente qui précède la naissance de l’idée ou de l’intuition, en ayant recours au lâché prise, conservé intact dans sa manifestation ou capté pour s’engager dans le processus de conception marqué par la conscience, quelle que soit la rigueur des moyens.
Ombres que nous percevons du coin de l'œil jusqu'à la limite de notre champ visuel et qui disparaissent dès que nous tournons la tête. Combinaisons d'éléments physiques et mentaux en mouvement constant. Permanence de l'individu. Identification. Transcendance des expériences de vie... En 1988, commençant d'une série séquentielle de portraits, Zabo Chabiland initie cette enquête - la condition humaine comme étude anthropologique. Projet: confronter l'image de l'homme à sa diversité. Extraire l'essentiel de l'individu.
Les sujets sont sélectionnés par types physionomiques (race, âge, corpulence) dans les rues cosmopolites de la ville de New York. Modèles d'humanité. Une fois en studio, leurs visages et leurs corps sont assombris. Les yeux sont fermés. Invitation à la méditation. Subjectivité. Silence intériorisé. Séances interminables. Rires, joie, indifférence, tristesse, colère... toutes sortes d'expressions sont dissimulées.
Les couleurs du visage sont solennelles. L'irrationnel est perçu en neutralisant les émotions. Seuls les traits comptent. A la fin du processus, les structures fondamentales sont développées sur un film radiographique sans perdre son objectivité. Profils et carnations deviennent ténus sous le filtre noir. Archéologie du visage, émission extraordinaire, l'image reste en suspens.
Nicolas Cappan
Catalogue Identidade, Encontros da Imagem.
David Chandler,
Catalogue de l'exposition "Presences", The Photographers’ Gallery, Londres.
En 1895, Wilhem Röntgen, découvre de façon sérendipidique les rayons X. Le premier cliché date du 22 décembre 1895. Dès 1897, Antoine Béclère comprend l’intérêt que peut en tirer la médecine.
Dans une vingtaine d’année la radio médicale sera supplantée par l’IRM. Il s’agit d’une fin de cycle.
Les clichés de Zabo Chabiland, représentent des personnages grandeurs nature, enduits de charbon développés sur des films radiographiques. L’artiste s’est muée en médecin radiologue. Elle transforme son studio photographique en un service hospitalier particulier. Il s’agit d’une hospitalité.
On ne voit la peau que dans un seul sens. La série Corps en suspens, est une expérience nouvelle. L’œil du photographe est à l’intérieur du corps. L’artiste propose de voir la peau depuis l’intérieur, sans le soucis de l’apparence corporelle extérieure. Elle a gommé toute expression. A travers les yeux des sujets, on imagine Zabo Chabiland photographiant. Il s’agit d’une expérience totale. Une inversion.
Le portfolio de Zabo Chabiland, repose sur une volonté de dépasser la composition qui renvoie à une réalité immédiate. Son travail dépasse la surface tout en l'utilisant, casser les repères existants pour en faire naître de nouveaux. Projeter le regard au-delà, vers l'intérieur illimité de ce qui est représenté en surface.
Dans sa série “corps en suspens”, le corps est la chambre noire du photographe poussée à son extrême. Elle décèle l’intime de l’être hors de sa représentation, de sa façade. Ce qui est photographié pourrait être associé à l’âme.
Jérôme Karsenti
PERSONA - or the removable mask -
Omen mag # 9 (Marcus Leatherdale)
Omen mag # 9 (Marcus Leatherdale)
Persona : - Is a social role or a character played by an actor. Derived from ancient Latin, Persona originally referred to a theatrical mask. Today it does not usually refer to a literal mask but to the "social masks" all humans supposedly wear.
-In the study of communication : Persona is a term given to describe the versions of self that all individuals possess.
Behaviours are selected according to the desired impression an individual wishes to create when interacting with other people.
- In marketing : Some marketing experts recommend that one creates a Persona that represents a group of customers so that the company can focus its efforts.
-In psychology : The Persona, for Carl Gustav Jung, was the mask or appearance, the social face the individual presented to the world - a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual..
(source : wikipedia.)
Think of that long history of Vanitas paintings... An attempt to catch, encapsulate, by representing the whole world in its essence : a table, man-made items and tools, books, instruments, next to natural goods, food, fruits, flowers, sometimes in decomposition, some paper, mostly unwritten, some ink, a feather, and the presence of human being, crystallized by its passing, his remains : a skull - what else.
A presence-absence, the perishable. Immortalising the ephemeral : Cheating death.
(...Quite a humble statement and harsh critic on human condition ultimately for those works to be named Vanitas...)
When painting and such was the only way to represent the world, this was an easier, understandable, place to live in : a place where men could figure out the mechanics of things they were surrounded by. A place where the constant underlying war between objectifying and subjectifying - the definition of reality - wasn't that much of a topic. Yet.
The more means we have to observe, decipher and analyze the world, the less we have an answer and the more we have questions.
Standing in front of Zabo Chabiland's pieces, I watch and think hard... No, actually, I don't. I screw my eyes in an attempt to get the contours, grasp the main lines ; not of what is before my eyes, but the mental imprint those images are making on my brain.
Reading between the lines. Trying to feel hard.
They happen to be rapidly talking to me, sooner than expected, it appears that those aren't the objective statements they formally, at first sight, dress up in and pretend to be. Nice try, I think and inwardly chuckle at that observation ;that trick she is playing...
No, they aren't statements at all. They are questions. Unformulated questions though, just as a raw and yet unformed material, such as clay, would say : Look, i'm infinite possibility ; what will you do with me ?
The black portraits deny me a look, an insight into what we call the windows of the soul. The words "death mask" and some images of them, tucked up in the back of my mind, are flashing by... followed - like a blow and an exclamation mark - by bits and pieces the word Persona beholds, falling, like swirling leaves, upon the death masks...
All eyes are closed. like looking inward.. This is, they are demanding from me to look beyond, to focus harder on my mental horizon, delineate and perform a movement of having to go deeper, whilst distancing myself in the same breath : get the "big picture"...
- Mise en abyme as much as paradox, because one has to get real close to the pieces in order to decipher an image at all - at first sight, from afar, it's all black. Opacity, permeability.
The closer i get, the more i see, but the less I know. Here we are. Here we go. again. A double function : because as much as it hides, the veil reveals. Transcendance. No, imminent immanence. (another blow with exclamation mark)
I softly smirk... cuz yes, I'm thinking to myself, what other choice do we have but looking at the world and ourselves through a veil, if we genuinely want to have the possibly most truthful view upon it and us......Slowly heading towards the "X-Ray" pieces...
This time, moving away from the perspective of close ups framing the faces of the "Black Project" portraits ; the subjects are being shown entirely : naked bodies, frontally facing the viewer, like gazing statues.
Naked, plain flesh, instead of the expected topography of bones. Of broken bones.
Here again the skin is being objectified if not anonymized by its preparation : like in some life stage ritual - those ones, we degenerated civilized people can only talk about from a conceptualized, anthropological, exotic distance - the bodies and faces have been completely scrubbed "in", covered in soot.
- a Make-Up, the making up of a mask. Dressed up in nudity. Another layer, another veil, another presence-absence. Is there something broken to be checked out here ? A fracture ? No. I m being shown a whole entity, sealed by the skin, unbroken, unfragmented, frontal, bare and offered to my eyes, yet barely showing, another person(a?) denying me a view into its eyes again - like it would become obscene to show more than this : there is enough of being abandoned to oneself and to the other here. Letting go.
Because if an access is being denied to us in the apparatus of the view of the subject, if the interaction, the answer we keep on looking for in someone else's eyes is nonexistent here, it nevertheless puts those subjects at the most vulnerable level possible.
Like a pile of clay, they silently ask : what will you do with me.. - or to me. And the answer arises as the question does : there nothing i want to do. I feel it in my bones, there's nothing else to do, but to let myself drift into that very same state of receptivity they are in. I feel now like I'm sneak-peeking at someone sleeping ; although knowing I've been invited to do so. If everything is given, there's nothing more to take. Non plus ultra intimacy. I can suddenly hear my regular breath, sense my verticality, as I'm standing there, motionless, in front of those images, as their very reflection, feeling the space, the volume of the room enfolding me.
Unfolding thoughts ; more than if I'd have a portrait of an individual, eyes all open, animated by an emotion, a thought, with its expressions and looks, their "lack" of individuality makes me wonder and realize : this actually is a person, with a life, a history ; and as my mind tries to "put scaffolding up", devise what those histories could be, the attempt as much as the will to do so weaken, because I know it is a story I could only be trying to figure out, one that will ultimately remain unrevealed to me.
Chabiland makes very few statements, but she makes a bold one by telling us this isn't the point anyway, wiping away "la petite histoire", getting beyond the anecdotal, reaching out for more, for that "bigger than life" thing. As I'm starting to pinpoint what this is all about, I'm beginning to envy the state those people are in. They seem to be floating, in a meditative state, in touch with themselves ; but not the "I" with a name, tastes, cultural affiliation, opinions, fears, joys, worries and bills to pay, not their Persona, but the inner "I", their inner eye, their alter ego - ultimately : their double. I have to stand corrected... : those pieces are not asking questions ; they are cristallizing a state, aspiring to it, by embodying that pure animal-like way of being, feeling like existence itself - and they are an invitation to strive for that state. And at the instar of the difficulty it takes to reach that level of dispossession, those pieces aren't giving themselves away that easily ; and their formality, anonymized appearance shuffles the issue for more than one viewer. Camouflage is nature's craftiest trick - and Zabo Chabiland delicately hides her invitation.
And as I walk out of the room, throwing one last glance, reviewing those pieces again, retracing my steps, in order to imprint them as much as possible onto my retina and my memories, I realize, oh no, this is not about cheating death. nor about facing it. it's about getting acquainted to it. It's not about immortality. on the contrary : about endless renewal, resumption.... Just like we're starting to die ever since our very first breath ; with every little breath we take day in day out, that sustains the dying machine we are ; or just like we die a single bit every night, by letting ourselves fall into a deep saving sleep.... And I'm left with that soothing thought, that if there is a role, a social role to bear, that the possibility of reaching out, of becoming over and over again a dark horse, an immaculate blank page, in order to rename and redefine ourselves, always exists.
Zabo Chabiland gives us a hint, a blueprint for that matter - an ode to inhabiting the cracks, the void of our self - becoming, remaining, a palimpsest.
Elisa Coissard
-In the study of communication : Persona is a term given to describe the versions of self that all individuals possess.
Behaviours are selected according to the desired impression an individual wishes to create when interacting with other people.
- In marketing : Some marketing experts recommend that one creates a Persona that represents a group of customers so that the company can focus its efforts.
-In psychology : The Persona, for Carl Gustav Jung, was the mask or appearance, the social face the individual presented to the world - a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual..
(source : wikipedia.)
Think of that long history of Vanitas paintings... An attempt to catch, encapsulate, by representing the whole world in its essence : a table, man-made items and tools, books, instruments, next to natural goods, food, fruits, flowers, sometimes in decomposition, some paper, mostly unwritten, some ink, a feather, and the presence of human being, crystallized by its passing, his remains : a skull - what else.
A presence-absence, the perishable. Immortalising the ephemeral : Cheating death.
(...Quite a humble statement and harsh critic on human condition ultimately for those works to be named Vanitas...)
When painting and such was the only way to represent the world, this was an easier, understandable, place to live in : a place where men could figure out the mechanics of things they were surrounded by. A place where the constant underlying war between objectifying and subjectifying - the definition of reality - wasn't that much of a topic. Yet.
The more means we have to observe, decipher and analyze the world, the less we have an answer and the more we have questions.
Standing in front of Zabo Chabiland's pieces, I watch and think hard... No, actually, I don't. I screw my eyes in an attempt to get the contours, grasp the main lines ; not of what is before my eyes, but the mental imprint those images are making on my brain.
Reading between the lines. Trying to feel hard.
They happen to be rapidly talking to me, sooner than expected, it appears that those aren't the objective statements they formally, at first sight, dress up in and pretend to be. Nice try, I think and inwardly chuckle at that observation ;that trick she is playing...
No, they aren't statements at all. They are questions. Unformulated questions though, just as a raw and yet unformed material, such as clay, would say : Look, i'm infinite possibility ; what will you do with me ?
The black portraits deny me a look, an insight into what we call the windows of the soul. The words "death mask" and some images of them, tucked up in the back of my mind, are flashing by... followed - like a blow and an exclamation mark - by bits and pieces the word Persona beholds, falling, like swirling leaves, upon the death masks...
All eyes are closed. like looking inward.. This is, they are demanding from me to look beyond, to focus harder on my mental horizon, delineate and perform a movement of having to go deeper, whilst distancing myself in the same breath : get the "big picture"...
- Mise en abyme as much as paradox, because one has to get real close to the pieces in order to decipher an image at all - at first sight, from afar, it's all black. Opacity, permeability.
The closer i get, the more i see, but the less I know. Here we are. Here we go. again. A double function : because as much as it hides, the veil reveals. Transcendance. No, imminent immanence. (another blow with exclamation mark)
I softly smirk... cuz yes, I'm thinking to myself, what other choice do we have but looking at the world and ourselves through a veil, if we genuinely want to have the possibly most truthful view upon it and us......Slowly heading towards the "X-Ray" pieces...
This time, moving away from the perspective of close ups framing the faces of the "Black Project" portraits ; the subjects are being shown entirely : naked bodies, frontally facing the viewer, like gazing statues.
Naked, plain flesh, instead of the expected topography of bones. Of broken bones.
Here again the skin is being objectified if not anonymized by its preparation : like in some life stage ritual - those ones, we degenerated civilized people can only talk about from a conceptualized, anthropological, exotic distance - the bodies and faces have been completely scrubbed "in", covered in soot.
- a Make-Up, the making up of a mask. Dressed up in nudity. Another layer, another veil, another presence-absence. Is there something broken to be checked out here ? A fracture ? No. I m being shown a whole entity, sealed by the skin, unbroken, unfragmented, frontal, bare and offered to my eyes, yet barely showing, another person(a?) denying me a view into its eyes again - like it would become obscene to show more than this : there is enough of being abandoned to oneself and to the other here. Letting go.
Because if an access is being denied to us in the apparatus of the view of the subject, if the interaction, the answer we keep on looking for in someone else's eyes is nonexistent here, it nevertheless puts those subjects at the most vulnerable level possible.
Like a pile of clay, they silently ask : what will you do with me.. - or to me. And the answer arises as the question does : there nothing i want to do. I feel it in my bones, there's nothing else to do, but to let myself drift into that very same state of receptivity they are in. I feel now like I'm sneak-peeking at someone sleeping ; although knowing I've been invited to do so. If everything is given, there's nothing more to take. Non plus ultra intimacy. I can suddenly hear my regular breath, sense my verticality, as I'm standing there, motionless, in front of those images, as their very reflection, feeling the space, the volume of the room enfolding me.
Unfolding thoughts ; more than if I'd have a portrait of an individual, eyes all open, animated by an emotion, a thought, with its expressions and looks, their "lack" of individuality makes me wonder and realize : this actually is a person, with a life, a history ; and as my mind tries to "put scaffolding up", devise what those histories could be, the attempt as much as the will to do so weaken, because I know it is a story I could only be trying to figure out, one that will ultimately remain unrevealed to me.
Chabiland makes very few statements, but she makes a bold one by telling us this isn't the point anyway, wiping away "la petite histoire", getting beyond the anecdotal, reaching out for more, for that "bigger than life" thing. As I'm starting to pinpoint what this is all about, I'm beginning to envy the state those people are in. They seem to be floating, in a meditative state, in touch with themselves ; but not the "I" with a name, tastes, cultural affiliation, opinions, fears, joys, worries and bills to pay, not their Persona, but the inner "I", their inner eye, their alter ego - ultimately : their double. I have to stand corrected... : those pieces are not asking questions ; they are cristallizing a state, aspiring to it, by embodying that pure animal-like way of being, feeling like existence itself - and they are an invitation to strive for that state. And at the instar of the difficulty it takes to reach that level of dispossession, those pieces aren't giving themselves away that easily ; and their formality, anonymized appearance shuffles the issue for more than one viewer. Camouflage is nature's craftiest trick - and Zabo Chabiland delicately hides her invitation.
And as I walk out of the room, throwing one last glance, reviewing those pieces again, retracing my steps, in order to imprint them as much as possible onto my retina and my memories, I realize, oh no, this is not about cheating death. nor about facing it. it's about getting acquainted to it. It's not about immortality. on the contrary : about endless renewal, resumption.... Just like we're starting to die ever since our very first breath ; with every little breath we take day in day out, that sustains the dying machine we are ; or just like we die a single bit every night, by letting ourselves fall into a deep saving sleep.... And I'm left with that soothing thought, that if there is a role, a social role to bear, that the possibility of reaching out, of becoming over and over again a dark horse, an immaculate blank page, in order to rename and redefine ourselves, always exists.
Zabo Chabiland gives us a hint, a blueprint for that matter - an ode to inhabiting the cracks, the void of our self - becoming, remaining, a palimpsest.
Elisa Coissard