04 Apr 2010

Miss Marion Solo Show at La B.A.N.K, Paris

Miss Marion Solo Show at La B.A.N.K, Paris

Miss Marion devotes her practice to the exploration of female archetypes in Hollywood films from the 1920s to 1950s. Since 2005, she has focused on decoding the Sex Symbol myths from pop era Pin-Up to film noir Femme Fatale in her performances, installations, photography, videos and collages. The full or partial disclosure of her own body enables her to evoke the notion of voyeurism and to question the artist's presence/absence in relation to the viewer's submission to her domination. For her first solo exhibition 'Plus j'embrasse, plus j'aime embrasser', Miss Marion will address the vulnerability generated by such control.

In her childhood, at the family home in Cherbourg, Marion held her first secret make-up sessions, organised behind her feminist mother's back. Thanks to Le Cinema de Minuit, she developed a real fascination with the stars who would help form her aesthetic sense: Hepburn, Monroe and Hayworth. Her interpretation of the game of seduction found its first expression in the form of a memoir about pink and femininity which she wrote during her time studying at decorative art. But it was not until her years in London, Paris and the world of high fashion, where she works as a press officer, that Miss Marion would really reveal the feminine side within her.

Since 2005, Miss Marion has been expressing this transformation by means of interactive installations which put the viewer in the position of a voyeur. Whether staring her public in the eyes while slowly and silently undressing in performances, sometimes involving multiple actors, or forcing this same public to look at a part of her body in a repetitive and obsessive way via a polished installation mechanism, Miss Marion reclaims an old instrument of masculine power: the gaze. This reversal of power is based on a contemporary reinterpretation of the great feminine archetypes promoted by Hollywood cinema, roughly from 1920 to 1960. Behind the multiple identities successively embodied by the artist - woman-child, femme fatale and popular pin-up - the fragilities of a post-feminism balancing emancipation and the reappropriation of sex symbol codes are highlighted.