NO·MAN·MEN
“Gays are not men.”
If Adam hadn't originally been subjected to the various forms of heteronormative and religious discrimination, he would have fallen freely in love with Bob, then Peter and Alain. He would have had a first beautiful love affair with Jaime, then a pacsé with Asad. He is said to have divorced, spent a few years with Antoine and Lucas, then with Derrick. He then married Alejandro, with whom he had two children, one with Eva, the other with Eva's wife Marie. He would have had lovers, one-night stands, momentary encounters. He would have become a very handsome man who loved life and men.
In 1978, Monique Wittig closed her lecture on La Pensée straight with the words: “Lesbians are not women. The same is true of the queer. What's more, so is the gay artist. At a time when gender identities are profoundly questioning the foundations of society, when the words of minorities are being freed up and heard to formulate injustices that no longer have any reason to exist, it is possible to question homosexuality as a gender. In the process of recovery and affirmation, being gay can no longer be reductive. Quite the contrary, in fact. The reversal of insult, abuse and perceived monstrosity is a gesture of reappropriation of a gay identity. The system that others know is not our own, which reality has deeply traumatized both collectively and individually. I'm not one of the men, I'm not heterosexual, I'm not white. I'm not a man.
Gay identity is built through struggle. And today, it's finally rising again, carried by youth and queer, trans and non-binary identities, carried by years of fighting for rights; and all over the world. All over the world, the humiliations suffered by all minorities are being recognized. Resilience is in action.
My work today seeks to posit images constitutive of a gay subjectivity as a new paradigm. This imagery, long forbidden and demonized, was for a long time the only one it was possible to model in order to exist and feel part of something. And yet, it's integrated into the daily lives of millions of people.
NO-MAN-MEN is built in stages, in successive layers that playfully invoke color and gesture around the gendered binarity of blue and pink. The aim is to share these “intra-subcultural” images that have marked the history of art and LGBTQIA+ culture, from Michelangelo to Robert Mapplethorpe, via Francis Bacon, Grindr and Instagram.
Extremely masculinized bodies, whose forms are drawn from community and personal fantasies, must be seen as bodies in motion and in struggle. It is also in a spirit of sharing and open dialogue that I propose that what is defined as pornography becomes a motif. The sexualized gay body thus becomes political. It's about rebuilding a phallic body, without fear, shame or hierarchical relationships.
Being gay is no longer just an orientation, it's a creative identity that needs to question sexuality and fantasies. My paintings are no longer deviant fantasies. They're prehistoric.
These are acts of love, landscapes, like echoes of Jean Genet's queer poetry: “Tenderly nibble the paf that beats your cheek, / Kiss its swollen head, thrust into your neck / The pack of my cock swallowed in one swallow. / Strangle yourself with love, disgorge, and pout!”.
