Teddy I
Photography
2008
Teddy II
Photography
2008
Teddy III
Photography
2008
The fluffy teddy bear updates the paradox of the monster. Originally savage, dangerous, terrifying, giant, the bear in its synthesis copy becomes a recomforting sweet midget. Simulation is here domestication. In front of a teddy bear, the child himself becomes a capricious monster turning his toy into his thing, imposing on it his affection and anger. Just as the dolls, teddies encounter the risk to see their organs torn out. This sinister operation usually reveals an interior made by foam and springs as a mechanical metaphor of an animal. But Virginie Duhamel reinforced the encounter of a symbolic code and made reality appear under its organic form in her photographs. A mass of intestines overflows from the teddy’s belly, symptom of a magical violence that as it destroys also generates life. As what attends the given coup to the miniature idol is its reality. More precisely the fetishes of mercantile society are due to end up destroyed just as our dreams. The childhood that is maintained inside us is habited by such a rage, the real that overcomes us that by overflowing and destroying the image it ends up destroying also ourselves. It is our angelical identity that is challenged by the diabolic jump of the real while, just as hot lava, it flows out of the entrails of the world.
Raphaël Edelman, Nantes, may 2008
