François Goffin (BE) - "de sous nos paupières closes"
Ongoing process, swaying interaction between picture and text, this project takes roots in the sentient resonances drawn by François Goffin from contemporary authors’ writing.
Reflecting upon the fertile ground from which springs up « the one who creates », by words, by images, François Goffin started corresponding with three writers, Mathias Énard, Wajdi Mouawad and György Dragomán. These internationally acclaimed authors have in common the exile and the memory of the soils pegged to their bodies.
From the discussions and correspondences emerges a symbolic word, pretext, praetextus - weaving before. Rootedness feeding the work as well as a drifting excuse chasing a lived space.
Then follows, by the photographic medium, an exploration of the territories in which these writers have been bred : Ste Pezenne in France, Deir el Qamar in Lebanon and Târgu Mureș, in the heart of Romanian Carpathian. Their memories as a watermark, François Goffin furrows these places, nourished by movements, details, suspended times. The resulting pictures become so much chapters of a new story, of a new memory. Their allegorical potential feeds from poetical imperfections, spectral apparitions, happy accidents.
There is nothing as certified laws and precise effects from the geographical area. The only truth is volatile, incomplete, built from fragments and erosion, from shifting reminiscence we try to stow by words learnt afterwards.
Pauline Salinas Segura
