Mains d'oeuvre - Véronique Ellena
Upcoming exhibition
Overview
© Véronique Ellena_ Courtesy Hangar Gallery
Mains d’oeuvre* is a photographic series that explores the world of workers and apprentices. Véronique Ellena has always questioned what exists on the margins. She pays attention to those who are rarely seen and seeks to capture beauty where it is least expected. For this series, the artist entered a vocational training center, settled there, and observed how things and people are shaped together in a space still preserved from the sometimes harsh realities of the working world. In a context of profound societal change, these future workers carry the memory of a fading past as well as the vitality of a new generation. Gestures are transmitted and repeated; the workshops, though functional, are alive and inhabited; objects, crafted for learning, are used and then discarded or transformed; colors surprise, and light pulses through the spaces. Learners and trainers share a common principle: the commitment to doing things well. In this world of apparent raw simplicity, beauty emerges — highly poetic, sometimes incongruous — from unsuspected richness and precision. Mains d’œuvre reveals the contemporary and essential nature of manual labor and highlights these workers, fundamental components in the functioning of our world.
*supported by the Cnap
