Blending Picasso, Athens graffiti, and a confronting female gaze, Santé reflects on what it means to be seen and to look back.
Santé takes its name from Stromae’s song, a toast to the people who rarely receive one. That gesture of recognition is central to the work. I was drawn to the way the song honours those who move quietly through the world, carrying their own burdens, their own stories, their own inner lives. This collage is my way of extending that toast toward the realm of the soul.
The central figure is rendered in cool blues and quick, expressive lines. She is not meant to be read as a body on display, but as a being in a moment of inwardness. I wanted her to feel permeable, shaped by what surrounds her, memory, emotion, the noise of the world. The body is simply the threshold; what interests me is the interior life it contains.
Around her, I brought together fragments that have shaped my own visual and emotional vocabulary. Picasso’s Françoise (1946) appears as a quiet historical echo, a reminder of how the female form has been framed and interpreted across time. I include it not as homage, but as a witness, an older gaze that observes without dominating.
In contrast, the graffiti photographs I took in Athens in 2018 bring the immediacy of lived experience. These marks, anonymous, raw, urgent, carry the pulse of the street. They represent the voices that insist on being seen, even when society overlooks them. Their textures seep into the composition, just as the world seeps into us.
The large eye on the left is crucial. It is a female presence, but it is not looking at the figure, it is looking at you. It watches the viewer watching her. In that reversal, the hierarchy of the gaze shifts. The eye becomes a witness, perhaps even the soul of the piece, calmly observing the act of looking. It introduces accountability, tenderness, and a subtle tension: who is truly being seen here?
Santé is, for me, a meditation on recognition of oneself, of others, of the invisible emotional labour that shapes our days. It is a portrait of interior life, layered and porous. A quiet toast to the worlds we carry within us, and to the rare moments when they are acknowledged.
