Harlem

ИСКУССТВО | 12 апреля 2010 | K.A. & M.D.N. |

Визуальные искусства

Harlem, or the Poetics of the Body

  The photographs of Martine Barrat submit us to an exercise of perception that is out of the ordinary. In effect, today we have become more and more accustomed to imaginary models imposed on us by the producers of cultural marketing. These models, oversimplified, are bound to images torn from their contexts and sociopolitical realities, and subjected to market forces, to an ugly, hollow esthetic. A veritable poison to imagination and creativity, these forces all too often transform the immense domain of the arts into a feeble and inoffensive vector of (vehicle for) esthetic, social, and political innovation, and engenders the major pandemic that is the sterilization of creative potential. However, with her photographs, Martine Barrat shatters the somnolescence of our senses, she launches us toward a more turbulent space, and roads less traveled. Lured from the realm of mercantile clichés, exposed to a permanent course of intensive variation, we are thrown into the powerful world of Harlem, into its life. Martine Barrat,  Harlem,  David Cooper