"For several years now, I’ve been writing about the paradoxical and ambivalent feelings I experience. This practice helped to put into words the strong emotions I was feeling, to understand better what was happening in my life and to express myself."
Artist: Hawa Laetitia
Project: Sans Titre
"Sans Titre is a project that I created to make sense of my own self. This is semi-autobiographical photographic novel that originated from my life story, my search of identity and a need to piece together fragments of myself. As artists, I’m convinced that the first subject we address is ourselves and this is where my artistic approach starts.
For several years now, I’ve been writing about the paradoxical and ambivalent feelings I experience. This practice helped to put into words the strong emotions I was feeling, to understand better what was happening in my life and to express myself.
Through drawing, painting, and the art of zines, I began to visualize the distress, the permanent blur in which I found myself – in which I still find myself – and then photography inspired me to use my body as a medium.
These feelings drove me to create and enable me to tackle universal topics that I can’t seems to make sense of, such as: the idea of self and self-expression, the feelings of belonging, loneliness... but also more personal, more violent subjects such as rage, anger, madness, and death.
This project is part of this artistic approach. It opens the possibility of individual interpretation."
"I chose to work on this idea of duality between a subjective point of view, which I bring through passages from my diary written over a period of 10 years, and a more analytical point of view, which is brought by this story written in the third person, where my feelings are approached from a much more distant perspective.
In these self-portraits, I use my body as a tool, a vessel to show these emotions. I become the embodiment of my feelings. They were also created as a cathartic exercise, with the aim of showing and expressing who I am to others and myself.
This idea of duality and ambivalence is the common thread running through this book and is represented in every graphic design aspect:
- The white pages and the typed text represent the analytical point of view and the black pages accompanied by a handwritten text and these thick streaks of paint, inspired by the palimpsest technique, a practice that consists of a parchment from which the first writing has been erased to be able to write a new text.
- The cover is made from mirror finish paper, because the distorted reflection it provides represents well the distorted image, we can have of ourselves when we are lost.
The particularity of this cover is that it remains the same in terms of design but changes depending on the light, where the book is being displayed and who is holding it.
Sans Titre gave me the opportunity to open my world and to no longer feel alone with those feelings that overwhelm me sometimes. It also created a deep desire to help, to share and create community."
© Hawa Laetitia