Sidonie Hadoux
« Raccommoder des petits bouts éparses du monde »
[In English below]
Sidonie Hadoux travaille la photographie comme un objet malléable, une véritable matière qu’elle altère ou modifie, comme pour transformer directement ce que l’image nous montre. Au fil de ses expérimentations plastiques, l’artiste développe une démarche originale et sensible, en allant chercher du côté de savoirs-faire manuels (édition de livres d’art, colorisation cinématographique, broderie, corderie, etc.) et en puisant dans des connaissances théoriques liées à l’écologie et au féminisme. En résulte des œuvres dépassant le strict champ de la photographie, parfois légèrement troublantes, à la frontière de l’onirique ou de l’indiscernable. Une manière toute personnelle de s’interroger sur les croisements entre corps, mémoire et territoire.
Formée en journalisme à Science Po puis au Market Photo Workshop à Johannesburg, Sidonie Hadoux a d’abord approché le médium photographique en autodidacte. En évoluant dans des lieux de pratique amateur ou dédiés à la transmission et à l’éducation aux images, elle s’est forgée une pratique engagée, en prenant soin de se questionner sur le regard et l’acte photographique : que choisit-on de photographier, et comment ? Qu’est-ce que l’image connote ? Quels sens et quelles symboliques produit-elle ? À partir de ces interrogations préalables, Sidonie construit un travail plastique expérimental pour creuser des sujets politiques et sociétaux, et s’intéresse particulièrement aux impacts que la société productiviste et capitaliste dans laquelle nous vivons depuis le 19ème siècle, laisse sur les individus et les environnements naturels. Trouvant son inspiration dans les paysages des Hauts-de-France dont elle est originaire, Sidonie Hadoux photographie les terrils, les cités minières, les forêts et les bords de mer, où elle fait évoluer parfois quelques corps féminins – nus, à égalité avec ce qui les entoure. Une façon pour elle d’interroger le lien entre capitalisme et patriarcat, en portant un regard critique sur le passé industriel du territoire et la façon dont ces espaces ont été transformés, maitrisés, dégradés ou réparés par l’activité humaine.
Dans un premier temps, Sidonie arpente les lieux qui l’intéressent et collecte frénétiquement des images, sans sélection ni recherche esthétique particulière. Elle vient ensuite retravailler leur surface, par différentes techniques : broderie, photocopie, froissage, grattage, glaçage, brûlure ou colorisation par l’ajout de couleurs primaires à l’aquarelle... autant de gestes par lesquels l’artiste malmène tant l’objet lui-même que ce qu’il présente. Ainsi altérées ou maquillées, ces photos emportent le réel dans une dimension étrange ou imaginaire : les formes des corps ou des paysages se dissolvent, les contours s’échappent et la perspective se brouille, si bien que l’on peine à identifier ce que l’on regarde. Ces Explorations, développées sur le temps long et déclinées sous plusieurs chapitres, semblent exprimer métaphoriquement le mélange d’un sentiment de colère et d’une volonté de réconciliation entre l’humain et l’environnement, dont il ne cesse d’extraire les ressources. Avec Raccommodage par
exemple, c’est aux dunes de la côte d’Opale que Sidonie s’intéresse, dont l’étendue réduit à mesure que le sable disparaît vers les zones urbaines, alors qu’elles jouent un véritable rôle dans l’écosystème du littoral. Prenant la forme d’une installation photographique dont les diverses parties sont reliées par une toile de jute et des ajoncs de laine brodés dans la toile imprimée, cette œuvre est une tentative de réparation symbolique de ces lieux dont l’artiste aimerait prendre soin.
À travers ses installations, Sidonie Hadoux rend l’image évolutive. Avec ses Diapographies notamment, qu’elle réalise à partir de petits éléments amassés sur la côte (algues, sable, huile, cambouis, plumes et autres matières), sauvegardés dans des diapos puis projetés en très grand format. À l’écran, ces formes devenues abstraites, presque graphiques et picturales, se transforment et ternissent peu à peu sous l’effet du passage du temps. Une réflexion sur la vanité du visible, qu’elle prolonge avec Même les pierres disparaissent : des images d’empreintes de pas, d’écumes échouées ou de roches rongées par les vagues, réalisées à l’aide d’un appareil photo pour enfant, sont imprimées sur des bandes de papier thermique. Présentées comme des petits rouleaux à tirer puis à rembobiner, celles-ci s’effacent progressivement sous l’effet des frottements et de la luminosité. En même temps qu’elle est exposée, l’œuvre active sa propre disparition. Ainsi, alors que le propre du médium photographique est de capturer pour toujours sous une même apparence ce qui, l’instant d’après, sera déjà changé ; Sidonie elle, invente des dispositifs pour désacraliser et rendre éphémère le sujet photographié – et la Photographie elle-même. Ce qui n’est pas sans évoquer, et retourner, la définition qu’en donne Roland Barthes : « Quoi qu’elle donne à voir et quelle que soit sa matière, une photo est toujours invisible : ce n’est pas elle qu’on voit. »1 En s’attaquant à la surface de celle-ci, l’artiste fait ressortir la nature même de l’image photographique – matériau plastique et moyen d’expression – et met au second plan ce qu’elle montre.
La question du passage du temps, les notions de traces, de durée ou de souvenirs sont donc récurrentes dans le travail de Sidonie Hadoux, tant dans sa réflexion sur la pratique de la photographie que dans ses explorations autour de notre rapport aux environnements que nous habitons. L’édition L’eau trouble qui abreuve nos racines rassemble un panel d’images imbriquées les unes dans les autres, tantôt en couleurs ou en noir et blanc, pliées ou dépliables, offrant des visions de forêts, de végétaux, de littoraux et de corps féminins qui semblent s’y promener. Elle construit ainsi des lieux imaginaires et renoue avec ses propres racines, intimes et géographiques, tout en s’interrogeant sur la notion d’héritage : que léguons-nous ? Qu’est-ce qui reste et qu’est ce qui disparaît, d’une relation, d’un habitat, d’un lieu ... ? Une chose est sure, même si l’eau est trouble, elle nourrit nos racines. Et c’est par la photographie que Sidonie Hadoux tente d’en faire quelque chose.
Par Ninon Duhamel, juillet 2024
Commissaire d'exposition indépendante et critique d'art
1 Roland BARTHES, La Chambre Claire, note sur la photographie, édition Cahiers du Cinéma, Gallimard, Paris, 1980, p.18
Sidonie Hadoux
“Mend of the small tips scattered of world"
[Texte original en français ci-dessus et téléchargeable ici]
[Text written for the exhibition "L'eau trouble qui abreuve nos racines", 31th may till 26th July 2024 at Château Coquelle, Dunkerque.]
Sidonie Hadoux works with photography as a malleable object, a tangible material that she alters or modifies, as if to directly transform what the image offers us to see. Throughout her artistic experiments, the artist develops an original and sensitive approach, drawing on manual skills (publishing art books, cinematographic colorization, embroidery, ropemaking, etc.) and theoretical knowledge related to ecology and feminism. The result is works that exceed the strict field of photography, sometimes slightly disturbing, at the border of the dreamlike or the indiscernible. A very personal way of questioning the intersections between body, memory, and territory.
Trained in journalism at Sciences Po and then at the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg, Sidonie Hadoux first approached the photographic medium as an autodidact. By evolving in places of amateur practice or dedicated to the transmission and education of images, she has forged a committed practice, taking care to question herself on the photographic gaze and act: what do we choose to photograph, and how? What does the image connote? What meanings and symbols does it produce? From these preliminary questions, Sidonie constructs experimental plastic work to explore political and societal subjects and is particularly interested in the impacts that the productivist and capitalist society in which we have lived since the 19th century leaves on people and environments. Finding her inspiration in the landscapes of Hauts-de-France (where she comes from), Sidonie Hadoux photographs slag heaps, mining towns, forests, and seashores, where she sometimes depicts a few female bodies – naked, in harmony with their surroundings. A way for her to question the link between capitalism and patriarchy by critically examining the industrial past of the territory and the way these spaces have been transformed, controlled, degraded, or repaired by human activity.
Initially, Sidonie surveyed the places that interested her and frantically collected images, without selection or aesthetic research. She then reworks their surface, using different techniques: embroidery, photocopying, crumpling, scraping, glazing, burning, or coloring by adding primary colors in watercolor... all gestures by which the artist mishandles both the object itself and what it presents. Thus altered or disguised, these photos transform reality into a strange or imaginary dimension: the shapes of bodies or landscapes dissolve, the contours escape, and perspectives blur, reaching a point where we struggle to identify what we are looking at. These explorations, developed over a long time and divided into several chapters, seem to metaphorically express a mixture of anger and a desire for reconciliation between humans and the environment, from which they continue to extract resources. With Mending for example, it
is the dunes of the Opal Coast that Sidonie is interested in, whose extent is reduced as the sand disappears towards urban areas, while they play a crucial role in the coastal ecosystem. Taking the form of a photographic installation whose various parts are connected by burlap and wool gorse embroidered onto the printed canvas, this artwork is a symbolic attempt to repair these places that the artist wishes to care for.
Through her installations, Sidonie Hadoux makes the image evolve. With her Diapographies in particular, she creates works from small elements amassed on the coast (algae, sand, oil, sludge, feathers, and other materials), preserved on slides, then projected in a very large format. On the screen, these forms, which have become abstract, almost graphic and pictorial, transform and fade little by little under the effect of time. A reflection on the vanity of the visible, which she extends with Even the Stones Disappear: images of footprints, washed-up foam, or rocks eroded by waves, taken with a child's camera, are printed on thermal paper strips. Presented as small rollers to be pulled out then rewound, these gradually fade away under the effect of friction and light. At the same time as it is exhibited, the work activates its own disappearance. Thus, while the characteristic of the photographic medium is to capture forever under the same appearance what, the next moment, will already be changed; Sidonie invents devices to desecrate and give a fleeting quality to both the subject and the photography itself. This is reminiscent of, and reverses, Roland Barthes' definition: "Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see." By attacking its surface, the artist brings out the very nature of the photographic image – as a plastic material and means of expression – and puts what it shows in the background.
The question of the passage of time, and the notions of traces, duration, or memories are therefore recurrent in the work of Sidonie Hadoux, both in her reflection on the practice of photography and in her explorations of our relationship with the environments we inhabit. The edition The Troubled Water That Waters Our Roots brings together a panel of images nested within each other, sometimes in color or in black and white, folded or unfoldable, offering visions of forests, plants, coastlines, and female bodies that seem to walk there. She thus constructs imaginary places and reconnects with her own intimate and geographical roots, while questioning the notion of heritage: what do we bequeath? What remains, and what disappears from a relationship, a habitat, a place...? One thing is sure, even if the water is cloudy, it nourishes our roots. And it is through photography that Sidonie Hadoux tries to make something of it.
By Ninon Duhamel, July 2024
Independant curator and art critics
1. Roland BARTHES, La Chambre Claire, note on photography , Cahiers du Cinéma edition, Gallimard, Paris, 1980, p.18
[Texte original en français ici]
Sidonie Hadoux concludes her residency with an exhibition, featuring a video projection in the Salon and works from several series displayed in the exhibition room. Three staged images recall the artist's first series, where she establishes a strong relationship between body and landscape. To better combat the flatness of the print, she conducts numerous experiments and hybridizations that highlight her own relationship with nature and the threats it faces.
She continues her explorations with colorized black-and-white images, using only primary colors, giving these natural views a sense of strangeness. The questioning of photography is also evident in Even the Stones Disappear. Human traces captured with a children's device on thermal printing paper are presented on a roll. The technology itself condemns these images to disappear.
She often organizes her images into artist books, the first of which, dated 2019 and simply titled Photographs, brings together her various explorations. She likes to use the leporello form, as in the frieze of the 4 Landscapes of the Region, made from photocopies and additions of dry pastel stencils. She can be more interventionist regarding the surface of the image. Her book 66393 ha counts the hectares of forest burned in 2022, first attacking the image by burning part of it and then attempting to repair it using embroidery.
The intervention also takes place in the projection of her Diapographies. The basic slides are presented manually with a thread count reminiscent of past practice. On the left screen, views of algae are superimposed on natural materials, while on the right, the same living organisms are confronted with the more harmful action of ink, motor oil, and fertilizers, which cause them to disappear. The artist thus likes to confront us with the unconscious of the image in her superpositions, as she had already done in her more intimate series I didn't want to be a notification, where her self-portraits are placed under a layer of WhatsApp exchanges.
The most successful and spectacular work is undoubtedly her installation Raccomodage, which aims to counterbalance the phenomenon of the disappearance of dunes. Two views printed on canvas are joined using tapestry stitches. Faithful to her palette, she uses primary colors for her additions of wool or hemp. A coconut fiber ground net extends the system, the material being used to consolidate the weakened dunes. The photo's incompleteness is counterbalanced here by artisanal techniques generally attributed to women.
Through the subtle expression of her ecological aims as well as through her plastic successes, Sidonie Hadoux carries out committed work of real artistic power.
Christian Gattinoni, member of the International Association of Art Critics, teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles from 1989 to 2016, visual artist and curator. Read on lacritique.org
The murky water that waters our roots – Sidonie Hadoux
[Exhibition statement]
[Texte original en français ici]
Visual artist Sidonie Hadoux places plastic experimentation at the heart of her photographic work. The image becomes a raw material intended to be transformed by a multitude of formal experiences borrowed from the very broad fields of visual arts. The resulting images are hybridizations, sometimes abstract, sometimes object-like, which mix intimate anecdotes and universal landscapes. After her residency at Château Coquelle in spring 2024, Sidonie Hadoux is inaugurating an exhibition on our premises that explores large formats and the field of installation.
Sidonie Hadoux finds her inspiration in observing everyday places and in the landscapes she has traveled since childhood: the dunes, the sea, the natural spaces of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. She also draws from the history of their representations and their significant developments due to climate change. She examines and questions industrial capitalism—particularly in our region—as a system of domination over bodies and natural spaces. By altering and mishandling the photographic material—burning, weaving, coloring, incorporating earth and sand—she echoes the way in which the earth and living things are exploited by humans in a capitalist economic regime.
In the Explorations series, people survey the hills formed by the slag heaps of the mining basin in northern France, a land marked and damaged by years of extractivism. Through capitalism and patriarchy, men are primarily responsible for the destruction of nature. For this reason, she chooses to photograph only so-called “feminine” bodies to question their role and place, like other dominated minorities in this system.
“I want red, whether it’s the red of the setting sun, or the red of blood and witches.”
The Explorations series also draws on the artist's readings, particularly Mary MacLane's book, Let the Devil Take Me. Thus, Sidonie Hadoux photographs consciously to create an imagination where people do not pose but are active, in movement, in action.
In the Raccommodage series, it is the dune space, so fragile in the face of climate change and fragmented by urban sprawl, that Sidonie Hadoux sets out to patiently reweave, depicting the underground work of the stems of seaweed running under the sand, which help to fix the dunes against erosion. As the artist explains, it is not a question of reconquering a fantasized nature, but rather of re-taming, reconciling spaces and bodies, mending small scattered pieces of the world. This is a way of “questioning our ways of repairing nature, of leaving traces, of always wanting to control everything, to beautify, to make up.”
Sidonie Hadoux also invites us to understand photography and, more broadly, the exhibition space with our senses and our body. Photography here is no longer just a surface but takes up space as an installation (Mending), an artist's book to unfold, or an object to touch and images to explore (Even the Stones Disappear). In the small living room, the Diapographies installation invites the public to sit on the floor and let themselves be enveloped by the giant algae projected on the screens while listening to the musical creation designed by the artist MondKobold. Sidonie Hadoux has created a kind of natural ready-made by inserting algae, sand, and earth into slides, which are then placed in two slide projectors. We are then brought back to our place, humbled, facing these large algae, which are the main basis of marine life and play a fundamental role in limiting the greenhouse effect.
Céline Rousseau, director of Les Rencontres Photographiques de Dunkerque.
