Clara Lemercier Gemptel – SOMA, 2023

Influenced both by horror films and by the thinking of philosopher Judith Butler, Clara Lemercier Gemptel explores cinematic codes, aesthetic norms and the power and domination relationships that govern the representation of individuality in pictures. Her films and video installations showcase a variety of bodies, reflected in the collective strength of a sports team, the absence of workers in an abandoned factory, or female stereotypes in the canons of Western art history. Her work shows the extent to which the image of a body is the product of political, social, cultural and historical discourse.

Amid the incessant din of machines, SOMA brings us the voices of workers. Managers, nurses, insurers and sales assistants describe, in their own words, the brutal professional mechanisms and workplace practices that caused them to develop a host of symptoms of physical and psychological trauma. Strange white silhouettes accompany each of the accounts in an attempt to give substance to these anonymous voices. As Clara Lemercier Gemptel’s camera wanders through the labyrinthine alleyways of these spaces where no human presence remains, the suffering of the protagonists echoes in the Grandes Locos, a former railway depot originally used for repairs.