For its third episode, isola gives voice to the artists of Ateliers Indigo with a crossover between an exhibition and a podcast

“Do we know what we look like? Not really”, answered the photographer Walker Evans.  To this question, we could add another one: are we sure we are “normal”? “not really”. Because if we know the norm, its power both frightening and comforting, the normal and the abnormal do not have clear boundaries. The abnormal is just another way of being normal, in all. The one who is said to be “abnormal” invents his own normality, most often by circumventing the weight of the norm. Those who suffer from a disability have no choice but to develop a singular and particular way of inhabiting the world. He must invent another presence to things, another way of expressing himself.            

Art, too, has its norms, just as it has its margins. If there is today a series of terms to characterize the artistic work of the disabled person, it should not be forgotten that behind this valorization of the difference reveals a truth common to all artists: “the painter brings his body”, said Paul Valery. Every artist with a disability reminds us that art consists first of all in bringing his body, in making it his own, through his history, his imagination, from his own impulses. But, beyond the denominations and the boxes of which the medium of the art is fond, the artist carrying handicap comes especially to take a place against all, a place that he creates himself. In this world of the art which, whatever one says about it, remains excluding, he realizes a form of “putsch”. By moving the codes and by shaking up the habits, he puts things back in place, so to speak: he shows that art must remain, in its founding gesture, outside the norm.

Text by Simon Brunfaut

Opening on Wednesday 27 April from 5pm to 9pm
with dj sets by Indigo Magic Orchestra

Opening hours Saturdays from 11:30am- 6:30pm until 4 June