Annette Messager - Plaisirs/Déplaisirs (2001)
Since the early Seventies, French artist Annette Messager explores a universe of children, housework, sexual identity, the clichés of what is commonly understood as a woman’s world. A woman artist beyond feminism, today famous worldwide, Messager works with sentimentally loaded objects such as photos, toys, diaries, dead animals, which she cherishes and destroys, transforms and trivializes in large, colorful installations. Her work is about the "plaisir" of tenderness and eroticism, but also the "déplaisir" of violence and death, with the artist herself appearing as "Annette Messager collectionneuse", "tricheuse", or "amoureuse".
This award-winning film was shot in exhibitions in Paris, Hamburg, Madrid, Lyon and Avignon and avoids on-camera interviews, preferring Messager's poems as sound track. More than a documentary in the strict sense of the word, it is a visual and sensual approach of the artist’s work, limning the sense of sorcery and irony so present in her universe.
Video, 45'