Sandra Rocha

Curated by Sandra Rocha, Fannie Escoulen and Nathalie Giraudeau.

Sandra Rocha’s installation at the Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France is the result of a fruitful encounter between the fixed and moving images produced by the artist in her native Azores, in the heart of this land that gave her birth. 

Continuing on from her previous series, Sandra Rocha once again puts man in his natural environment and the ties of community forged between all living creatures at the heart of her new composition. 

The comforting landscapes she calls into being - which seem to have been taken straight from the Garden of Eden - invite bodies like celestial apparitions to commune with Mother Nature, nature whose lush vegetation seems to protect these beings who are totally at one with the elements.

Using image sequences, she portrays symbolic micro narratives that reflect our state of mind and our suffering. How can we live with our identity, our sexuality and our femininity? How can we understand these people who look like us, but who are also strangers?

In the distance, we can hear the ancient song of the Metamorphoses. We can see Narcissus endeavouring to find a person who he thinks is separate, but who is in fact a part of him, or rather is him. We can see Actaeon being transformed into a stag by Diana, and Hermaphroditus losing his identity as his body merges into that of the nymph Salmacis. And to this multitude of mythologies, each of which contains the many meanders of life itself, Sandra Rocha provides continuity, a hymn to the beauty of the world and its agitations, sung with the living breath of the chorus of life itself.

Fannie Escoulen