The Carriers - The Carriers

Technique: garbage bags sewn onto canvas.
Exhibition available in several formats.

A legend reported by Pliny the Elder traces the art of silhouette painting back to Dibutades, daughter of the Corinthian potter Butades. To preserve the image of the young man with whom she was in love, the young woman surrounded the shadow of his face projected on the wall by the light of a lantern with a line...

With this series of life-size figures, Fanny Allié renews the art of Dibutade by working from garbage bags sewn onto canvas. Far from the salon cutouts that prevailed in the 19th century, Fanny Allié draws inspiration from photographs taken in the street, mixed with gleaned images and imaginary characters. Her work acquires an almost tragic social dimension through the use of ephemeral materials, which her models confront day after day.

Merging with both their environment and the objects they carry, the figures border on abstraction without ever tipping into it. The lost-shoe-woman, the cape-man, the shadow-woman, the barefoot-man, the butterfly-man, the cardboard-man—the titles of the works express what Fanny Allié captures of their urban migrations and encourage us to look more closely, to look more.

Captured in silhouette, as if suspended, the fragile characters become the protagonists of a myth or a familiar tale, souls lost in the spaces we occupy daily.