La Fugitive

About

An object of the narrator’s passion, covetousness and jealousy, Albertine is a strong and self-assured women, yet she remains elusive, her character always slipping out of our grasp. She has few spoken lines in this narrative, yet remains the subject and master of her actions. Throughout this and the subsequent volumes, she sows confusion about her motivations and personality rather than enlightening the narrator and readers. Ultimately, her character is as secret as it is complex.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear that Albertine loves women and this sensuality that
she constantly reveals comes to obsess the narrator.
Many artists, in their practice, address the questions raised by the figure of Albertine in "À la recherche du temps perdu" and by her treatment at the hands of literary critics who refuse to see her as anything but the fictional embodiment of real-world male characters in Proust’s life. Challenging a visual culture inherited from the male gaze, rejecting the immutability of forms and foregrounding queer people, these artistic interrogations advance a perhaps more complex and polysemic way to see things and the world.

The exhibition "La Fugitive" seeks to reembody Albertine through twenty emblematic works by contemporary artists and pieces produced specially for this exhibition. They constitute a journey from the young girl’s domestic space to the both real and fantasized milieux that in this book slip away from the narrator’s inquisitorial and voyeuristic gaze.

Group show organized by Ana Mendoza Aldana in collaboration with Claire Le Restif.