Britney Paradox, The Medusa effect
Trailer 1min23
During a sleepover, a group of young women explore the myth of Medusa and go back to the historical and factual origins that led to her creation and the evolution of her image in the collective imagination. In the course of their discussions, the figure of the Gorgon is compared to that of Britney Spears, presented as a beautiful young virgin before representing the image of the femme fatale. They called the pop star "our sacrificial virgin of the third millennium" and questioned the power of the gaze and of projection: which can change a being into a symbolic object.
Fuite romanesque
Exhibition view Fuite Romanesque
Cité des arts de Paris, France
Installation 2022, corner structure paint in Green Chroma key 240x120cm, fibre glass, resin,
model 34x23cm, cardboard, papers, light, cristals
Fuite romanesque by Sarah Caillard is an installation comprising a translucent dress made of fibreglass and resin that is placed in front of a large corner structure painted in "Chroma Key
Green" (the colour commonly used for greenscreen special effects). Elements filmed or photographed against this backdrop can therefore be isolated and placed elsewhere, thereby changing their scale, location and manipulating the context. The scene dedicated to this process of inlaying images is a scale model of the exhibition space itself, which is placed on a small pedestal. The scale model allows us to look inside at the static scene and imagine the various elements placed within the Chroma Key Green structure coming to life, projected into a dreamlike, uncanny, and cartoonish scenography.
The installation is a reflection on the mechanisms of imagination. It takes a look at how we constantly move back and forth between the real and virtual worlds, sometimes without even realising it. In this virtual scene, the notion of scale becomes confused and the relationship between inside and outside is disturbed as surfaces reveal bodies that are not present. Our gaze becomes the director of a possible narrative, one that allows the elements to unite and the movements to exist.
Sarah Caillard (France) is in residency as part of the Cité internationale des arts "2-12" program.
Thanks to WBI and Centre Wallonie Bruxelles Paris
The temptation to be a fiction
Reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169x56x22cm
Fiberglass, epoxy resin 163x50x 60 cm
Sculpture is a ghost in itself, it is the image of what is no longer there. In “The temptation to be a fiction” a woman’s body is caught in concrete, like a vestige of our contemporary world. It’s the idea of a body, a femininity and the heaviness it implies. It’s also the idea of the classic tradition and the notion of ruin.
The ghost is presence by absence. He terrifies by what he represents no more than by what he is. A transgender being, a paradoxical body. Dive into a state of inter-matter, it symbolizes the duality of existence.
The two stand side by side, Their gestures, however frozen, seem to have transcended time, they become the receptacle of a projection the place of fantasy. Fantasy meant ghost until the 14th century and finally defined a production of the imagination that allows the self to escape reality.
We do not become adults in the world that we knew, child or adolescent, we are seduced by the idea of all who we have been and who we are no longer. The hardest part is finding the presence.
like a ghost we are caught in the meantime it’s also being able to wear seconds skin, to be the same and the other, the temptation to be a fiction.
Pilot
Exhibition view Des choses vraies qui font semblant d’être des faux-semblants
La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille France
Installation 2021, 400 x 400 cm box
On the front side of the box
here is an opening of 33x18cm to see an installation:
Reflective fabric, blackout fabric, wadding, metal, fibre glass, light
On the right side
green key” paint (colour used for inlay in cinema) 180x260cm, wooden gallows 48x12 cm,
crystal chandelier created from recycled metal 50 x 33 cm.
On the left side
green key” painting 180 x 260 cm, wooden gallows 48 x 12 cm,
fibre glass and resin ghost 33 x 13 cm.
On the back of the box
green key” paint 23 x 33 cm,
QR code giving access to a video, 5min
video link : https://vimeo.com/431738245
Pilot 2021 green key paint 23 x 33 cm, QR code link to: https://vimeo.com/431738245
Exhibition view Des choses vraies qui font semblant d’être des faux-semblants
La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille France
The video "Pilot" is the virtual counterpart of the installation. The sculptures and installation are animated and inhabited. The crystal chandelier shakes, a real character wakes up in the reflective fabric décor. He explores and chases a ghost to the rhythm of the original soundtrack of the film Vertigo. It is a man in reflective fabric who watches this scene on a phone and we, the viewer, see him watching. Other scenes take place on the phone, accompanied by various sound extracts (selected pieces from the series Charmed, various podcasts from France Culture on ghosting, fantasies and ghosts). The video develops the imaginaries, influences and references that participated in the creation of the sculptural work and its narrative development in video form.
Pilot 2020
Exhibition view Des choses vraies qui font semblant d’être des faux-semblants
Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris 2020
Reflective fabrics, wadding, metal, fiber glass, epoxy resin, 547x 300cm
The spectator is invited to enter the installation using the light from their phones torch to guide them. On entering the space they discover a featureless character adorned with a mermaid’s tail lying in a large bed. Suspended above this is the character of a ghost cast in translucent material. Reflective fabric tails of towards and up the far wall mimicking the form of a door held ajar.
The installation is a fantasy of sorts, the material, its scale and reaction to the torch light creates a feeling of an altered state. It’s as if we walked into our own dream or that the installation is some registered memory stuck somewhere, a place in which time seems to run differently. The ghost is the presence to relate to a form of otherness, feelings that lodge inside ourselves, things we can feel around us even though they are invisible to the eyes. The ghost is a way to make this appear, the presence of something intangible, a fantasy.
The reason for the darkness and the utility of the mobile phone is to enhance and stimulate the sensation of virtuality. There is no suggestion of a particular period or place. The roles are in flux there is no ‘I’ but scenes and characters waiting for embodiment. Like a myth as it adapts over time and places so this installation lends itself to our projections..
Night fever
Model 29x29x47cm
Cardboard, aluminium, epoxy resin, fibre glass, concrete iron, varnish, lamp
vidéo 1min19
https://vimeo.com/469519476/78f401c48b
Night fever 150x47x36cm
Reinforced concrete, steal, paint, resin
The model of a nightclub becomes the set for a video in which a character in flesh shares a dance with a ghost created from resin and fiber glass.
Line up
model 50x30x40cm
feather board, polystyrene, fabric, velvet, paper, concrete iron, varnish, lamp
Psyche
reflective fabric, foam,160cm
S.
reinforced concrete, pigment, corboleum 183x53x36cm
L’attente
reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169x56x22cm
Ghost
Fiberglass, epoxy resin 163x50x 60 cm
Nabilla
jesmonite, fibreglass, pigment, carboleum, paint, epoxy resin
156x67x36cm
This installation presents the different figures that populate Sarah's work. The different materials and techniques are used to embody their allegorical relationship: concrete is used to create bodies/architectures evoking a certain gravity. Resin and fibreglass represent ghostly presences. The retro-reflective fabric confronts us with a phenomenon of vision where the forms are perceptible through the light that the properties of this fabric allow to project.
Wayfarer
Exhibition view Wayfarer The Cabin, Los Angeles USA An exhibition with Douglas Eynon “Rain paintings”, 2019
Mine troubadour
reinforced concrete, pigment, glitter, paint and varnish 183x69x36cm
Gelosia
reinforced concrete, pigment, glitter, paint and varnish 127x89x28cm
L.a water
Plant, reinforced concrete, metal, pigment, glitter, paint and varnish.133x56x28cm
The sculptures were made from cast of bodies, surrounding materials and the pavements of Los Angeles. The concrete imprintes all this on the surface of the sculpture. Tears seem to have been frozen on their movement. The geometric shapes evoke the gelosia of harem architecture, used to hide women from the sight of men while allowing air and light to pass through.
Boo Who
Boo who
Installation 2018 76,4 Brussel
fiber glass, epoxy resin, glycerin, light, filter
"At the first exhibition of daguerreotypes in the middle 19c, viewers are said to have turned away from the wraith-like portrait plates in terror. Never having seen an image of a person separated from its “original”, they were spooked.
The spirit photography start with William H Mumler, he discovered the technique by accident, after he saw a second person in a photograph he took of himself, which he found was actually a double exposure. Seeing there was a market for it, Mumler started working as a medium, taking people’s pictures and doctoring the negatives to add lost loved ones into them. Mumler’s fraud was discovered after he put identifiable living Boston residents in the photos as spirits. But the current grow in the US and Europe, reaping small fortunes, using multiple exposure and other tricks to produce images of the beyond, it had become obvious that the new medium had come into its own as just that: a medium. Photography then became not only a means of representation but also a way of making ghosts”
La nuit américaine
Exhibition view La nuit Americaine, Le Wonder, Paris 2017
reflectiv fabric, steal, foam, light source
In a room plunged in darkness, lies a luminous halo on the ground indicating the position that the spectator must take.
Once standing under the halo a couple kissing comes into view.
Created from foam and reflective fabric, the sculpture’s surface reflects the light according to our position with respect to it. Once you have left the halo you can no longer discern the sculpture.
We are in front of an apparition, like an animal caught in car headlights. We find ourselves here suddenly in front of a moment of intimacy. We the spectator becoming a voyeur or seer.
-text accompanying the exhibition-
“An American night” is the name for a cinematographic technique that allows the shooting of outdoor scenes set at night to be filmed in broad daylight. The scene is typically underexposed with a blue tint added. The expression “Nuit Americaine" is exclusively French. In English, we note “day for night”.
The apple of my eyes
Exhibition view The apple of my eyes, Bruxelles, 2017
Nazar Boncuk, 1800 pebbles painted in oil
Fétiches, polystyrene, parafin, orange curtains, lead
La nuit américaine, reflectiv fabric, foam, steal, light spot
Walou, 7 steal chandelier, tassels
The exhibition is located in the backyard of a building in Molenbeek, Brussels. On the 1st floor, 1800 painted eyes are spread across on the ground. On the second floor, orange curtains are hung over empty windows, blown by the wind, coating the space in their color. Individual shoes are arranged all around the room. Orphans of their peer, frozen in an intermediate material. On the 3rd floor, the couple from La nuit Américaine is nestled upon a sofa. A projector in front of them allows us to see them as a luminous apparition. A metal chain descends all 3 floors on which 7 chandeliers are hung. It is about the void between the gaze and the intimate, the expression ‘apple of my eyes’ appears in many variations depending on which language. In Hebrew: ‘the little man in my eyes’ and in Arabic: the light of my eyes.
She
Exhibition view balls and glory,
galerie Rodolphe Janssens Bruxelles, janvier 2016
She’s lost control, 220cm
She, 213cm
She said, 187cm
She’s not there, 220cm
She’s so high, 224cm
She belongs to me, 183c
Reinforced concrete, polystyren
Person
Exhibition view Present, museum and garden Van Buuren Brussel Belgium, 2018
pebble, oil stick, reinforced concrete
Novembre
Exhibition Novembre view Island, Bruxelles, 2015
Madeleine, parafine, steal structure, 100x50 cm
Camille, reinforced concrete, polystyrene, 210cm
Psychose, parafine, 50x40 cm
Jeanne, reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169cm
Jules, reinforced concrete, polystyrene, 153cm
The exhibition ‘Novembre’ is inspired by cinema.
A figure, closer to a contour is titled Camille in homage to the character in the film “le mépris”. She stands next to a grotesque shape representing an enlarged shoe, evoking fetishism.
Upstairs is a parafin sculpture named Madeleine, a name that evokes memories. It is also the character’s first name in the film “Vertigo”. The female archetype of a “persona”. The sculptures are all directed towards the windows upon shutters were placed.
Yes sir I can Boogie
Exhibition view It’s not an opening just a peek,
Fondation Moonens, 2015
The scope, the expected , the elongated
Reinforced concrete, polystyren
Pilot 2021
Exhibition view Des choses vraies qui font semblant d’être des faux-semblants La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille France
Installation 2021, a box of 400 x 400cm
with on the front of the box: Reflective fabrics, black out fabric, wadding, metal.
On the left of the box: green key paint 180 x 260 cm, wood gallows, fiber glass, resin, nylon wire.
On the right of the box: green key paint 260 x 180 cm, wood gallows, steel and cristal.
On the back of the box: green key paint 23 x 33 cm, QR code link to: https://vimeo.com/431738245
Pilot 2021 green key paint 23 x 33 cm, QR code link to: https://vimeo.com/431738245
Exhibition view Des choses vraies qui font semblant d’être des faux-semblants La Friche Belle de Mai, Marseille France
The video "Pilot" is the virtual counterpart of the installation. The sculptures and installation are animated and inhabited. The crystal chandelier shakes, a real character wakes up in the reflective fabric décor. He explores and chases a ghost to the rhythm of the original soundtrack of the film Vertigo. It is a man in reflective fabric who watches this scene on a phone and we, the viewer, see him watching. Other scenes take place on the phone, accompanied by various sound extracts (selected pieces from the series Charmed, various podcasts from France Culture on ghosting, fantasies and ghosts). The video develops the imaginaries, influences and references that participated in the creation of the sculptural work and its narrative development in video form.
Pilot 2020
Exhibition view Des choses vraies qui font semblant d’être des faux-semblants Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles, Paris
Installation 2020, 547x 300cm
Reflective fabric, cotton wool, metal, fibreglass, resin
First version of the installation during the exhibition "Des choses vraies qui font semblant d'être des faux-semblants" at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris
The installation is plunged into darkness, the spectator is invited to enter the exhibition room with the help of the torch of his phone. The light activates the retro-reflective properties of the fabric, which covers all surfaces except that of a translucent fibreglass and resin ghost.
Night fever
Model 29x29x47cm
cardboard, aluminium, epoxy resin, fibreglass, concrete iron, varnish, lamp
vidéo 1min19
https://vimeo.com/469519476/78f401c48b
The model of a nightclub becomes the set for a video in which a character in flesh shares a dance with a ghost created from resin and fibreglass
The temptation to be a fiction
model 50x30x40cm
feather board, polystyrene, fabric, velvet, paper, concrete iron, varnish, lamp
Psyche
reflective fabric, foam, 160cm
S.
reinforced concrete, pigment, corboleum, 183x53x36cm
L’attente
reinforced concrete, polystyrene, 169x56x22cm
Ghost
Fiberglass, epoxy resin, 163x50x 60 cm
Nabilla
jesmonite, fibreglass, pigment, carboleum, paint, epoxy resin,156x67x36cm
Video 1min07
video link https://vimeo.com/543562134/004693d730
This installation presents the different figures that populate my work. The different materials and techniques are used to embody their allegorical relationship: concrete is used to create bodies/architectures evoking a certain gravity. Resin and fibreglass represent ghostly presences. The retro-reflective fabric confronts us with a phenomenon of vision where the forms are perceptible through the light that the properties of this fabric allow to project. The setting of the video is the model in which the sculpture of l’attente and the ghost is inlaid and animated.
Wayfarer
Exhibition view Wayfarer The Cabin, Los Angeles USA An exhibition with Douglas Eynon
“Rain paintings”, 2019
Mine troubadour
reinforced concrete, pigment, glitter, paint and varnish
183x69x36cm
Gelosia
reinforced concrete, pigment, glitter, paint and varnish 127x89x28cm
L.a water
Plant, reinforced concrete, metal, pigment, glitter, paint and varnish.
133x56x28cm
Boo Who
Exhibition view Boo who, 2018 76,4 Brussel
fiber glass, epoxy resin, glycerin, light, filter
"At the first exhibition of daguerreotypes in the middle 19c, viewers are said to have turned away from the wraith-like portrait plates in terror. Never having seen an image of a person separated from its “original”, they were spooked.The spirit photography start with William H Mumler, he discovered the technique by accident, after he saw a second person in a photograph he took of himself, which he found was actually a double exposure. Seeing there was a market for it, Mumler started working as a medium, taking people’s pictures and doctoring the negatives to add lost loved ones into them. Mumler’s fraud was discovered after he put identifiable living Boston residents in the photos as spirits. But the current grow in the US and Europe, reaping small fortunes, using multiple exposure and other tricks to produce images of the beyond, it had become obvious that the new medium had come into its own as just that: a medium. Photography then became not only a means of representation but also a way of making ghosts”
La nuit Américaine
Exhibition view La nuit Americaine, 2017, Le Wonder, Paris
reflectiv fabric, steal, foam, light source
In a room plunged in darkness, lies a luminous halo on the ground indicating the position that the spectator must take.
Once standing under the halo a couple kissing comes into view. Created from foam and reflective fabric, the sculpture’s surface reflects the light according to our position with respect to it. Once you have left the halo you can no longer discern the sculpture. We are in front of an apparition, like an animal caught in car headlights. We find ourselves here suddenly in front of a moment of intimacy. We the spectator becoming a voyeur or seer.
-text accompanying the exhibition- “An American night” is the name for a cinematographic technique that allows the shooting of outdoor scenes set at night to be filmed in broad daylight. The scene is typically underexposed with a blue tint added. The expression “Nuit Americaine" is exclusively French. In English, we note “day for night”.
The apple of my eyes
Exhibition view The apple of my eyes, 2017, Bruxelles
Nazar Boncuk, 1800 pebbles painted in oil
Fétiches, polystyrene, parafin, orange curtains, lead
La nuit américaine, reflectiv fabric, foam, steal, light spot
Walou, 7 steal chandelier, tassels
The exhibition is located in the backyard of a building in Molenbeek, Brussels. On the 1st floor, 1800 painted eyes are spread across on the ground. On the second floor, orange curtains are hung over empty windows, blown by the wind, coating the space in their color. Individual shoes are arranged all around the room. Orphans of their peer, frozen in an intermediate material. On the 3rd floor, the couple from La nuit Américaine is nestled upon a sofa. A projector in front of them allows us to see them as a luminous apparition. A metal chain descends all 3 floors on which 7 chandeliers are hung. It is about the void between the gaze and the intimate, the expression ‘apple of my eyes’ appears in many variations depending on which language. In Hebrew: ‘the little man in my eyes’ and in Arabic: the light of my eyes.
She
Exhibition view balls and glory, 2016, galerie Rodolphe Janssens Bruxelles
She’s lost control, 220cm
She, 213cm
She said, 187cm
She’s not there, 220cm
She’s so high, 224cm
She belongs to me, 183cm
Reinforced concrete, polystyren
Novembre
Exhibition view Novembre, Island, Bruxelles, 2015
Madeleine, parafine, steal structure, 100x50 cm
Camille, reinforced concrete, polystyrene, 210cm
Psychose, parafine, 50x40 cm
Jeanne, reinforced concrete, polystyrene 169cm
Jules, reinforced concrete, polystyrene, 153cm
The exhibition ‘Novembre’ is inspired by cinema.
A figure, closer to a contour is titled Camille in homage to the character in the film “le mépris”. She stands next to a grotesque shape representing an enlarged shoe, evoking fetishism.
Upstairs is a parafin sculpture named Madeleine, a name that evokes memories. It is also the character’s first name in the film “Vertigo”. The female archetype of a “persona”. The sculptures are all directed towards the windows upon shutters were placed.
Yes sir I can Boogie
Exhibition view It’s not an opening just a peek, Fondation Moonens, 2015
The scope, the expected , the elongated Reinforced concrete, polystyren
