Laëtitia Delauney
France, 1998
Unframing portraits, I paint myself better than you.
A Studio of One's Own B, The Hundred @_lebateau_
A Studio of One's Own - (personal project)
Women artists always had to play smart when it came to representing themselves. The male gaze presents a double standard — while men have always painted women how they want, women run into all kinds of limitations. I wish my painting was free of the male gaze but the truth is that I paint my nose better than it is, I give myself rounder forms, bigger boobs and designed lips. I imagine that I am flattering myself but it is the male gaze that I perpetuate. I had to break that.
A studio of One’s Own consists of the cuttings of my paintings, extended into the objects of a painters studio. In an act of emancipation, the painting escapes the conventions of the frame. The object is freer than the sacralized painting: you can interact with it, you can touch it, it is living. Through snippets of intimacy, my work is based on a constant search for oneself and for my relationship to objects and spaces. Painting, cutting and assembling are acts of challenging our perception and definition of dominant gazes.
Here I am, more liberated, painting in a space that is a twist of the ideal vision of a painter’s studio.
B, The Hundred (Laëtitia Delauney, Aurélia Noudelmann)
The construction of sailboats and their use is historically male-dominated and comes with a long and ongoing sexist tradition: for centuries, women were synonymous with bad luck onboard. However, having a feminine figurehead on the bow was not an issue. Nowadays, if they are no longer considered as scourges, women still have difficulty finding a place onboard. Our process was deeply rooted with the will to initiate a more inclusive practice to twist this convention: B, The Hundred is a sailboat built by two captain mermaids, from April to July 2021. The construction of B, the Hundred was driven by two main concepts that boats embody: the tension between shifting and hosting individuals, and their interdependence with water.
B, the Hundred is now a platform to host events and workshops, on water and on land.
B, the Hundred was built at Buurtwerkplaats Noorderhof Amsterdam.
