This project aims to reflect an aspect of society that I have been studying for a while now. Having grown up in Ecuador, Thailand and France I have noticed that wherever I lived I could find similarities in how people live and in their habits. The similarities were amazing to find as I initially thought that a different culture and geographic position made it really difficult to find the same aspects of life in really different people.
I decided to tackle this “uniqueness” issue with the use of “toys” in this project. Each one of the items featured in this project are clearly linked to the notion of toys. They serve the same purpose, which is to bring back memories and imagination. They serve as a sort of comfort and a lucky artifact. This allows me to represent the similarities between people with a very intimate approach for each subject. With the toys being present this allows the viewer to interact with the object.
With the first series of 6 portraits it is difficult to see clearly the link between the people however, the more subjects and the more diversified the collaborators are the clearer the message of the project will be. Doing this project on an international level would have been really interesting to produce however time and budget restriction restrain me from doing so.
Uniqueness is one of my main themes for this project and the concept of toys come and reinforce this theme. By considering them as collectible toys these objects become even more unique. However they conserve the notion that toys are universal and mass produced. They could be seen as collectibles that shouldn’t be collected.
The notion of possession is quite important. What would you value such objects? How can you possess such a personal object for someone else?
It is important for me to maintain a positive approach on meaningful and sometimes difficult themes, a way to make difficult themes accessible to all. The goal is to be able to mix themes, techniques and ideas, to put things in conflict and see how they work together. The essence of this project is to mix everything up, put them one against the other and see what impact they have together.
By having the toys physically present the body of work would have to be presented in an exhibition. These toys are supposed to be seen in an exhibition for the simple reason that the materialization of these toys is really important in understanding what these toys represent. The packaging and the design is closely linked with photographs. The one without the other doesn’t have the power necessary to make an impact.
to see the printed version go here.
