Clarisse Rebotier
With a grandfather who read and calligraphied Arabic (and Hebrew), Clarisse Rebotier long believed, as a child, that she was an Arab. It is an identity revolution when she understands that in reality she is the granddaughter of a Frenchman born in Tunisia.
This upheaval has since led her to abandon prejudices and take a concrete interest in humanity and understanding others. First, by studying languages, literature and philosophy at university. Then, in the exercise of writing and theatrical direction for five years spent in Tunis, which forge his determination to question what builds the individual.
Since then, she has devoted herself entirely to plastic and documentary photography, working on subjects that highlight identity above all.
On the occasion of her exhibition Hic et Nunc at the Musée de l’Homme as part of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Brigitte Trichet interviewed her. Clarisse Rebotier explains to her how the effect of surprise and the gap are among the main mechanisms she uses to create a new point of view on life and to confront us with what constitutes the human condition in us.
This is the case for these Animétro series, which feature wild animals in the urban space of the metro, and especially its 2054 series, in which rats are the main characters. Replacing the men, they composed a singular and disconcerting reconstruction of the Raft of the Medusa.
This series is part of a larger project undertaken over the past few years within the taxidermy department of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle. She likes to combine photography and taxidermy: two arts, two crafts, which share the desire to capture life through the creation of still images.
Her artistic approach is influenced by science, her practice of taxidermy and her work as a scientific photojournalist: she observes the human being (body, matter, thought, living together) through the links between the individual and the environment, between singularity and human diversity.
Specialist in the works of Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau, she enjoys playing with the form. She often chooses to work with pre-creation constraints: lists, repetitions, exhaustion of the subject. She draws on the links that the body and spaces weave in the theatre: Samuel Becket, Jean Genet or Wadji Mouawad.
Clarisse Rebotier is a member of the Association of Science Journalists in the News Media (AJSPI).
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Her works
2054
The 2054 series is a UFO in the corpus produced by the plastic photographer Clarisse Rebotier: in 11 paintings, the shock is both visual and emotional. An atmosphere of the end of the world. Rats, with human air – too human – wander alone on a devastated Earth, emptied of all life.
Concretization of a work of reflection and implementation that lasted several months, the series was conceived within the taxidermy department of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris, alongside Christophe Gottini, Workshop manager: this work is also an artistic tribute to the museum taxidermy.
