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Laia Abril, "Case Piece Chalco", Mexico,
from the series "On Mass Hysteria", 2023
© Laia Abril, courtesy Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire

Laia Abril » On Mass Hysteria

Debi Cornwall » Prix Elysée 2023 - Model Citizens

Jagoda Wisniewska » Photo Elysée x Arsenic

OPEN BOOKS » A PROJECT PHOTO ELYSÉE X EPFL+ECAL LAB

... until 1 October 2023

PHOTO ELYSEE

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Laia Abril, "Feelings", from the series "On Mass Hysteria", 2023
© Laia Abril, courtesy Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire

Laia Abril »

On Mass Hysteria

... until 1 October 2023

Artist Laia Abril (Spain, 1986) uses photography, archival documents and multimedia to create her highly political projects, often related to feminist issues and imbued with sociological, historical and anthropological insights. Her long-term projects are structured into different chapters.

The artist will be presenting her latest project at Photo Elysée: On Mass Hysteria (Genesis Chapter), the first draft of which led to her nomination for the Prix Elysée (2018-2020). Mass hysteria is a reaction to circumstances in which women are under extreme stress, feel repressed, or are forced into situations where they cannot communicate or express their thoughts and emotions.

On Mass Hysteria allows us to visualize this language of the pain of female representation throughout history.

Laia Abril, "Identity Thief", from the series "On Mass Hysteria", 2023
© Laia Abril, courtesy Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire

On Mass Hysteria

Evil witches were accused and executed in Salem, while possessed nuns meowed and had seizures across Europe. Hand-trembling epidemics spread among Swiss and German boarding schools, and laughing attacks widespread among Tanzanian girl’s students. Female adolescents in Afghanistan experienced fainting outbreaks, while over 600 boarding schoolgirls suddenly lost the ability to walk straight at a boarding school in Mexico. In Cambodian garment factories, thousands of women faint inexplicably during the last decade, and American cheerleaders tick compulsively and have seizures without a biological explanation.

Mass hysteria, or Mass psychogenic disorder – a term now more widely accepted – arises in tightly knit environments burdened by unbearable and inescapable social circumstances. When a stress trigger event unfolds, the group starts experiencing uncontrollable motor symptoms simultaneously, such as trembling, weeping, twitching, ticking, or even fainting. These involuntary symptoms, often resembling trance-like states, can persist for months and have non-organic origins. Although studied from diverse cultural and academic interpretations, two essential questions remain unresolved: How does it spread, and why does it predominantly affect young women, especially teenage girls?

Historically, the term hysteria has been employed to pathologize women perceived as "difficult." Medical historian Robert Woolsey suggests it could serve as a "protolanguage," with its symptoms functioning as "a code used to convey a message which, for various reasons, cannot be verbalized."

Exploring Mass Hysteria further as a form of unconscious protest, we discover that outbreaks often influence those in lower social positions confronted with challenging situations, such as life in strict boarding schools, laboring in factories with inhuman conditions, or dwelling in isolated religious institutions like convents. Dr. Josefina Ramírez, a Mexican physical anthropologist, offers an insightful perspective: Mass Hysteria might be a collective physical response that symbolizes the struggles these young women endure due to unequal social power dynamics.

The genesis chapter of A History of Misogyny , titled On Mass Hysteria , investigates the possibility of an ancient female protolanguage of protest. The project challenges the prevailing psychological approach that blames women for medically unexplained maladies. Instead, it emphasizes the impact of societal factors such as social and political oppression. On Mass Hysteria aims to visualize the collective pain of transgenerational trauma that is often ignored or diminished by society, passed down among women.

Laia Abril, "Wrong Cake", from the series "On Mass Hysteria", 2023
© Laia Abril, courtesy Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire

Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986) is a multidisciplinary artist whose works center around the themes of women's rights, grief, and bio-politics. Her research-based practice employs photography, text, and sound to explore difficult and hidden realities. One of her most acclaimed projects, "A History of Misogyny," has been exhibited in over 15 countries and her artworks are held in collections such as the Centre Pompidou and FRAC in France, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and Photo Elysée and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. Her career has earned her numerous accolades, including the 2016 Prix de la Photo in Arles, the 2020 FOAM Paul Huf Award in Amsterdam, the 2022 Hood Medal in London, and the 2023 Shpilman Award.

Laia is also a published author with several notable titles, such as The Epilogue (Dewi Lewis, 2014), Lobismuller (RM, 2016), which won the 2015 Images Vevey Best Book award; and On Abortion (Dewi Lewis, 2018), which was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Prize and won the 2018 Aperture-Paris Photo Best Book Award. Her most recent publication, On Rape , was released by Dewi Lewis in 2022. Abril is a lecturer at HSLU and is represented by the Parisian gallery Les Filles du Calvaire.

Debi Cornwall
Judgement Scenario 2. U.S. Border Patrol Academy. Artesia, New Mexico
from the series Model Citizens
© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elysée

Debi Cornwall »

Model Citizens

Prix Elysée 2023

... until 1 October 2023

Photo Elysée and Parmigiani Fleurier are pleased to announce the identity of the winner of the Prix Elysée 2023, the American photographer Debi Cornwall for her work entitled Model Citizens.

The work is in line with current events and is an important contribution that is timely, given the effect of fake news in our societies. Through her research, the artist questions the blurred line between truth and fiction. The project, which is both a political and intellectual commitment, points to the urgency and necessity of questioning photography as a proof. The impact of fake news is not limited to the United States – the artist is telling a local story that talks about global issues. We are convinced that with the Prix Elysée, Debi Cornwall will reach a new and wider audience and that the prize will help increase her visibility in Europe." – The members of the jury of the Prix Elysée 2023

The Prix Elysée endowment of CHF 80'000 will enable the artist to complete he research and publish a book.

Debi Cornwall
Number one. "Save America" Rally. Youngstown, Ohio
from the series Model Citizens
© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elysée

Debi Cornwall is an American conceptual documentary artist who has focused on her career as an artist since 2014 after practicing for twelve years as a civil rights attorney. Employing absurdity and dark humor, she excavates invisible systems by layering still and moving images with testimony and archival material. Her books Welcome to Camp America: Inside Guantánamo Bay and Necessary Fictions (Radius Books, 2017 and 2020) have received numerous awards.

Model Citizens
"Photographs can be evidence, yes, but evidence of what? My project, Model Citizens, examines the staging of reality and the performance of citizenship in the United States, a militarized country whose citizens cannot agree on what is true. In musems, exhibitions, trade fairs, non-military training sites including the 'U.S. Border Patrol Academy', and everyday life, I make photographs designed to invite inquiry: how are fictions deployed, commodified, and embraced, alternately preparing us for and distracting us from the realities of citizenship in a society undergoing perpetual violent crisis?"

- Debi Cornwall, text from Debi Cornwall – Crisis Actors: Performing Citizenship (Prix Elysée 2023).

Debi Cornwall
Interview. "Save America" Rally. Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
from the series Model Citizens
© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elysée

Exhibition at Photo Elysée
Her work in progress Model Citizens will be exhibited at Photo Elysée from June 30 to October 1^st, 2023.

Special mention:
The jury also awarded a special mention to Khashayar Javanmardi for his project See the Caspian to encourage him to continue his ambitious exploration of Iran.

Jagoda Wisniewska »

Photo Elysée x Arsenic

... until 1 October 2023

The artist Jagoda Wisniewska (1987) takes over Le Signal L at the invitation of Photo Elysée in collaboration with Arsenic .

She is interested in the perception of the female body and representations of female sexual and reproductive functions (sexual intercourse, menstruation, birth and breast-feeding). The female body, exposed and sexualised, is also hidden, described by Jean-Paul Sartre as "a series of wet holes and slimy substances". Simultaneously provoking desire and disgust, this "wetness" is both invigorating and threatening.

In this body of work, Jagoda Wisniewska explores the relationship between photography and performance art. She teams up with performer Tamara Alegre to examine the portrayal of the female body and its fluids, using the presence of the camera (and the photographer) as an accomplice in identity experiments.

Born in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in 1987, Jagoda Wisniewska studied photography at Napier University in Edinburgh, and then at the ECAL. Her work focuses on concepts of performativity and portraiture. Her projects examine the roles attributed to women, especially in the domestic realm, and explore the age-old fascination for the mother figure and its representations in photography.

OPEN BOOKS

A PROJECT PHOTO ELYSÉE X EPFL+ECAL LAB

... until 1 October 2023

The Open Books exhibition allows the public to discover the richness of photography books, as well as exploring the creative possibilities of this object and its influence on contemporary artists.

For the duration of the show, Photo Elysée will be revealing a selection from its book collection with the creation of a library that snakes through the exhibition space. It allows visitors to browse the books and immerse themselves in the sequences of images.

Bringing together image, typography and text photography books are objects offering myriad creative possibilities. They provide an intimate, tactile experience of a series or subject and give the reader time to appreciate the images and narrative. While social media have become a popular way of sharing pictures, photography books offer an aesthetic experience to immersing one's self in the work of the photographer. Both are structured around sequence, the order of the images, linked with text, captions or commentary.

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