Our Labor, Our Passion, Our Love

A proposal and text by Oriane Emery & Jean-Rodolphe Petter

Our Labor, Our Passion, Our Love are words that came up again and again in our discussions with the guest artists in the run-up to the exhibition.

This title evokes the construction and fluctuation of our identities. How do we project our desires, dreams and frustrations? The exhibition highlights acts and gestures of resistance
to the patriarchal and colonial heritage of Western societies. The intersectionality of these struggles reveals that resistance to oppression must be collective, united and, above all, intergenerational. The maze of post-war Western society shows us the importance of living together. We need to unite in the face of human cruelty, fight injustice and take back, step by step, the foundations of a system whose mechanisms favor submission over independence. Our bodies are the driving force. Our representations of love, desire and fantasy are closely linked to those of work and passion. The expression to give oneself body and soul is an example of this, a leitmotiv advocated by contemporary society. The latter disseminates and legitimizes an imaginary, deeply rooted in our relationships, where emotion is outlawed on pain of revealing vulnerability.

The artists Marisabel Arias, Juri Bizzotto, D. Denenge Duyst-Akpem, Charly Mirambeau, Moritz Krauth and Joan Pallé each, in their own way, express a retreat and resilience in the face of history and cultural paradigms, in the ways that the title of the exhibition explores. Sexuality, its practices and its dissemination by the media are addressed. The post-traumatic legacy of the colonial past; black women’s bodies that white men fetishize, violate and humiliate; queer bodies that patriarchal society rejects, commercializes and hyper-sexualizes at the same time. What representations of love do we possess beyond the one proposed every year on Valentine’s Day? How do we experience our sexuality and desire in the age of social networking? What kind of prevention is needed for young people, both in terms of sex education and Europe’s colonial history? And how do we deal with these issues of representation within the family sphere? From highly evolving works to more abstract languages, the public is invited to take the time to discover each work, while taking into account the dialogue that the space sets up.

The plurality of discourses and experiences opens up concrete avenues for reflection and encourages the deconstruction of processes and conceptions that privilege sustains. From what point of view? By whom and for whom? Through the prism of image and emotion, we invite you to seek out what we all share in common, rather than what divides us.

The project “Our Labor, Our Passion, Our Love” was made possible thanks to the generous support of the City of Lausanne, Pro Helvetia, Loterie Romande, the Canton of Vaud, the Leenaards Foundation, the Françoise Champoud Foundation, the Art-en-Jeu Foundation, and AC/E Acción Cultural Española.