Everything goes dark a little further down
Galeria do Paço – UMinho
Largo do Paço s/n
Monday→Saturday: 10am–6pm
This project is a personal exploration of the concept of monstrosity, as well as an exploration of my own queerness. As a starting point, I examined the construction of monstrosity throughout history, from the invention of hysteria in the 19th century to the role of freak shows, where staging was essential and images were manipulated to play a vital role in reinforcing the norm. We hold on to binary ideas of beauty, actively distinguishing between what is beautiful and ugly, sick and healthy, normal and abnormal. I wanted to blur these ideas with this work, to show that monstrosity exists within us all and that it is a concept that has been shaped and constructed over time.
Through self-representation, using my body as a raw material, I seek to fabricate monstrosity out of simple things surrounding me, to embrace it rather than to reject it. I became fascinated by the reappropriation of certain stigmatising terms such as ‘freak’, ‘queer’ and ‘faggot’ as a form of resistance, and by turning perceived weaknesses into strength. That is what really inspired this project, through it I decided to claim my own monstrosity. It is a love letter to the abnormal, a renunciation of being normal.
In reference to medical or anatomical iconography, I try to deconstruct normative representations of the body. To what extent is a body a body, and how can it free itself from the norms that constrain it? The photographs depict an extraordinary act of metamorphosis, where fragments are melded together to create something new. Despite the spectacular aesthetics of the images, it is just a show of banalities and the monstrosity, which seems disturbing at first, ends up revealing its own construction.
Matthieu Croizier
Matthieu Croizier (CH/FR 1994) is a photographer based in Lausanne. He graduated from the Bachelor Photography at ECAL (Lausanne University of Arts and Design). He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions and has received various International Awards (Paris Photo's Carte Blanche Students 2020; Futures Talents 2021; British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch 2021). He is now working on publishing his first photobook with Mörel Books, "Everything goes dark a little further down". Besides his personal projects, he gets commissioned for shooting portraits, editorial or still life.
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