2023 Art Exhibit

L Portraits

Cineffable is presenting the L Portraits exhibition. Madonnas. Contemporary lesbian writers. Famous women, or the less famous. Each in her own way pays a feminine tribute to lesbians. For the 35th edition of the film festival Cineffable is also paying tribute to women who have lent their artistic vision to past festivals.

The exhibition and its artists will be presented on Friday, October 27 during the 7:30 pm screening and opened afterwards.

For a second time round Cineffable is meeting up with Marie Docher, the patron of the exhibition, to show her series Et l'amour aussi at the opening session on Thursday, October 26 and at a book signing on Saturday, October 28 at 4pm.

Ten years ago, in 2012, the political process called "marriage for all" showed just how underrepresented lesbians were in the public debate and the collective imagination. While our bodies and right to reproduction were a central part of the new law, we were almost absent from the coverage in the television, radio and press, who mainly invited men and women opposed to the law. This photographic work aims to fill this gap in representation, draw portraits, talk about love, solidarity, commitment, of what 2012 was able to change or not change in our lives.

I wanted to take stock of the great diversity of those who call themselves lesbians, homos or dykes, who "love someone", who keep quiet, who have moved to the biggest cities or who remained in the regions, of those who got married and those who didn't and those who arrived by sea, and who, having been raped, gave birth here helped by other lesbians.

MADONNAS series

Paintings by Marina Tziara

Image © Marina Tziara

Marina Tziara's Website –

@tziarart

I first started painting my Madonnas a year ago, on my second birthday. Two years during which I had to fight for my life. Two years in which I survived a femicide. Two years during which they had to replace my carotid artery. Two years during which I sport a 14 cm scar on myneck. Two years in which I learned at first hand that there is a real price to pay for being a woman. No matter whether you are a mother, wife, a whore, single or lesbian, childless, fat, slim or natural, cultivated, or whether you are a success, whether yo are an athlete, an artist, an activist, a feminist, a hard worker, a nun or a witch, it doesn't matter who you are if you have a cunt, you have to be put in a box. And they decide on that box. The box that defines us. Madonnas is a project and a series of paintings inspired by women who know that for more than 1,000 years they have not been able to be themselves.

Three portraits of contemporary
lesbian writers

Digital paintings by Marielle Belou

Image © Marielle Belou

@mariellebelou

These three writers openly talk about their homosexuality, and the title is a quote from these writers drawn from interviews. Nina Bouraoui: "What wealth, this homosexuality, which was a long road." Virginie Despentes: "It is a great relief to me to no longer be part of homosexuality." Constance Debre: "As for me, homosexuality gave me a strength that I did not have before." The geometric and fractured side of the portrait shows that homosexuality still does not enjoy a smooth reading in our world. My drawings oscillate between figuration and geometric abstraction, between destruction and reconstruction. The digital drawings are printed out on fine lightly textured art paper, which gives a three dimensional impression. The finish is close to silkscreen painting and gives all meaning to the term digital painting.

Portraits of flamboyant people

Artistic photographs
by Middy Sebolavy

Image © Middy Sebolavy

Middy Sebolavy's Website

Through the iridescent spectre of her thoughts, Middy Sebolavy uses artistic photography to do portraits of flamboyant people whose zany appearance is very often the reflection of a soul which is nevertheless concerned. Via the ludicrous or grotesque use of the profile photo (the iconic representation of the person 2.0) her series of self-portraits broach aesthetically and freely subjects like femininity, feminism or freedom of expression in all its forms. A committed artist, as in love with words as she is with life, her work is part of a dreamlike and sarcastic process. It plunges the audience into an at the same time extravagant and poetic world, in which origami, glitter, caricatures and other trinkets, give prominence to sensitive subjects. Through maliciously inspired portraits, performative photos of intuitive snapshots of stolen moments, Middy Sebolavy invites you to read the fantastic manifesto of her intimate thoughts.

Stephanie Perrot & Natacha Stroukoff, Don't cry, little girl!

"You are crying like a girl!" / "Women, they blubber all the time!" / "Men are strong, they don't cry" / "A woman's tears rot a man's heart" / "Nothing dries more quickly than a woman's tear" / "When a woman is no longer loved, she should do anything but cry!" / "With women there is always a place, where if you press, it cries" / etc.

There are a plethora of sexist remarks on crying, even in 2023. Even if crying is just the physiological expression of our emotions. In this video the artist Stephanie Perrot cries for real because she was sad, but at no point felt weak for having expressed her emotions. Through this video we wish to denounce all these degrading sexist remarks, for men as much as women who dare to cry. These expressions which endure, despite time, the attitudes which evolve and the so-called open-mindedness which goes along with it!

VisiblEs

Drawings, Paintings and Texts
by Amandine Brûlée

Amandine Brûlée's Website

On the day dedicated to Lesbian visibility on April 26, 2023, I did around 30 portraits of women and non-binary people with a strong link with lesbian identity. Those portrayed were invited to voice their opinions on this subject by replying to questions drawn up by Francoise and Marie-Helene Vigna, who founded a bookshop which is specialised in LGBTQIA+ and feminist themes, in Nice. Text and images were put on show together, giving a rich and diverse panorama of what Adrienne Rich dubbed "the Lesbian continuum". I will be presenting for Cineffable a variety of these portraits as well as a summary and questionnaire in situ.

Uterus Street Art in the nude!

Sculpture by The Anka Girls (Karly & AnneV)

@duoankagirls

We are a joint uterus, in love with Street Art, which transforms into 3D sculpture, brandishing from the heights its velvet topped by synthetic fur. Uteruses, anteverted, retroverted, genuflecting, we pile them up and slot them in to fight against the ever rarer nature of centuries-old ways. Concocted, teasing or disguised uteruses which show up in the form of gladiators to heckle and unseat thrones, the arses of killjoys who prevent us from living in the name of a well-meaning politico-religious ideology. Uteruses on view which break women's silence and which break the atmosphere of nebulous theories of the woman as an object stripped of all thought.

The Anka Girls, Uterus Street Art in the nude!

Collectif efferveSens, Neither women nor earth

Two women, two bodies, two voices. Who dance, play and dream about what the world might look like tomorrow, with respect for women and Earth. Of this world, which we hardly dare dream of, as it seems so far away. Two women, two bodies, a thousand voices. Who dance, who play and crisscross their stories with History, that which other Great Women invented, claimed and built before them, that the "great men" wanted to belittle.

Borrowing the words of Monique Wittig, Starhawk and Wendy Delorme "Neither women nor earth" is an ecofeminist fable spun with words and movements. At the same time poetic, sensitive and powerful, it pays a women's tribute to those who have endured and provoked History, while inventing their own. Without skipping over pain, shortages and pitfalls, and far from being a sweet utopia, this performance calls on us to take our future in hand.

October 26 to 29, 2023

2023 Art Exhibit

L Portraits

Partners 2023