Bauge de fakir

(2022/23)

Plaster, nylon burglar-proof discs, painted metal. 40.5 x 111 x 55cm.

The plaster cast of a boar pit (mud bath) is here associated with elements of defensive design. The imprint of the animal's body - both realistic (we can recognize precise details like feet and hair) and abstract (the figure of the boar is decomposed by the movement of the animal rolling in the mud) - is combined with modules named "Raptors" by their manufacturer: these deterrent shapes, black and pointed, possibly prickly and sharp, are provided above walls that one wishes to make impassable in this way. Bauge de fakir ("Fakir wallow") combines these defensive and dissuasive forms with that produced by an animal gesture of well-being, of bodily care: as if the animal ignored the injunction to move on, as if it wallowed in pleasure in these "brambles and industrial thistles", like a fakir on his carpet of nails.