Caroline Rivalan

Persona muta

Exhibition from April 9 to May 28, 2022.

The Eva Vautier Gallery is pleased to present Caroline Rivalan’s first solo exhibition, Persona muta. This project is supported by the Cnap (Centre national des arts plastiques).

Caroline Rivalan explored the feminine myths and the hedonistic aspect of nature crossed between figure and madness. The images she produces in microcosms (dioramas) or light installation devices, allow her to cross gravity and lightness.

For the Persona muta exhibition, the artist was interested in the theatricalization of Professor Charcot’s patients at the Salpêtrière. The figure of the Great Hypnotist and the Great Hysteric are unavoidable figures at the end of the century. The experiments carried out on these so-called “hysterical” women are documented, thanks to the photographic device installed in situ.

The making and reception of images produced during these experiments are questioned in The Invention of Hysteria by Georges Didi Huberman. Professor Charcot’s Tuesday lessons make public and “spectacular” the actions under hypnosis of these interned women where he stages the pathological body, the unchained feminine.

Caroline Rivalan’s research project revolves around the figure of madness and the instrumentalisation of women. The work on these archival images, allows to transform the object into subject and thus to remove the authority figure which orchestrates these representations, to displace the relation of established power. It is about the deconstruction of the relationships of dominations.