Natacha Lesueur, Crowned Fairy, 2021

Graphite monotype on fine art photographic pigment print, 48 x 48 cm

Signed, dated and justified on the back 2/3

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Moods of the fairies series

“For Natacha Lesueur, the body is an image, makes an image, or acts as a surface of inscription. Working mainly on portraits, often in series, she favors photography, and women’s figures have a special place in it. Traces, imprints, postiches, ornaments or ornament, it is a question of diverting, of amplifying, of overflowing, not without humor nor grotesque excess. In his portrait galleries, parading joyful or frightening phantasmagorias, the hair, as you can easily understand, has its place. There tiaras stacking shoes fashionable, here exuberant plumage or evocations topiary. Headdresses and hairstyles parade as if from an anthropological collection that would record possibilities as extravagant as they are unavowed.

Here they are adorned with gray hair and treated, according to the usual term, in grisaille. The smooth surface of the image is scratched, pencilled, a novel practice in his work, whereas his figures are usually the result of a long, meticulous elaboration prior to the shooting. Thus this redesigned bride, or this fairy of the house who ironizes with the degrading and macho stereotypes attached to the so-called housewives under or over fifty years. Pirate fairy or rocket fairy, with, she says, “auratic smoke, dynamic flames and disturbing combustions”, here they are, twisting the assignments, and exhibiting complex identities. With a mischievous art of counterpoint, Natacha Lesueur thus revives the game of roles, appearances, the varnish of images and photography.”

Text for the exhibition of Natacha Lesueur at Printemps de Septembre, Toulouse, 2021