From bank to Canon

Work: From bank to Canon.

Cyanoprint on Bergger cot320 paper, 27,9 x 35,5 cm, 22,5 carats gold leaf.

Location:

Le Cailar, France. 2023.

Reference text:

To name things badly is to add to the woes of the world; this phrase, attributed to Albert Camus, seems to me to be luminous.
Although I’m a visual artist, I attach great importance to text. Most of my projects are born from a word. From this starting point I draw a thread, etymology allowing me to broaden my thinking and go back into the past. I love digging into the history of people through their language, uncovering the narrative wefts that link them over the generations. Modestly, patiently, like an archaeologist unearthing buried treasure with a trowel and a toothbrush, I seek to oppose the veiled penumbra of cultural depth to the levelling by the perpetual present often bordering on the dazzled platitude of the desert.
Reflecting on a new chapter in my work linked to finance, I was trying to express its quasi-sacred nature when I came across the word Canon, whose multiple meanings perfectly illustrated the fatal chain of events that seemed to me to be at work.
If money is a new religion, then the banknote is its icon, and the person who generally sits at its center according to precise rules is thus « canonized ». A patriotic figure shrouded in gold and propaganda, his catechism is disseminated to followers for better or worse.

At a time when generals have become accustomed to appearing on 24-hour « news » channels, when presenters rave about the size of missiles and their capacity to perforate, at a time when the President uses words like rearmament, war economy, when he advocates natalism, although we don’t yet really know whether we’re talking about children destined to pay for our pensions or, more crudely, to water the furrows of the French soil with their proletarian blood, war has gradually gained a foothold in Europe.
After believing for some time that free trade and globalization would pacify the world, we have to admit that, as always, greed combined with the depletion of resources are causing tensions that, alas, can only be resolved by hatred and desolation.
The old reflexes resurface: nationalism, xenophobia, the cult of the providential leader, the ever-increasing drumbeat of boots.
Then it’s the big chopper, the big butchery…

But the cycle is not over. While some are flexing their muscles and putting their brains on pause, ready to go out with a bang before coming back in several pieces in a plastic bag. Others open factories and light up cigars.
Too much love of the bank can lead to the cannon, but love of the cannon leads some to the bank.
For, as Anatole France so rightly said:
« You think you’re dying for your country, but you’re dying for industrialists »…