Juliette Déjoué creates stage settings that are destined to welcome – and be activated by – people, who are invited to appropriate the space that she creates. With generous abundance, her work echos carnivals and folk practices; masks, costumes, and other decorative objects, which are made from plaster, mortar, ceramic or papier-mâché, mix with found articles. These objects are made available to people, who are invited to appropriate them, and they blend, according to their use, singular associations with multiple realities. Against this backdrop, it is difficult to discern objects and people from the zone that welcomes them – sometimes they are brought to centre stage or are on the verge of coming to life.

 

These tableaux vivants, created by Juliette Déjoué, resist time thanks to their photographic traces, archives of a theatre in which volume and painting mischievously mix in the foreground and background. The images of scenes that play out against these backdrops trouble the perception of space in two or three dimensions. Placed next to the set, or existing independently of it, these photos act as a possible invitation, or inspiration, for someone wishing to take part in the installations and flexible forms. The decisive moment of capture marks a time of festivity, a performance without public that allows moments of complicity and play, during which Juliette Déjoué withdraws in order to let each participant let go of themselves, play with her work, and generate new stories from the multitude of elements made available to them.

 

In a continuous play of setting, form, perspective, composition, and colours, Juliette Déjoué constructs in her stage settings places of potentiality, from which unspoken or vague narratives can unfold. In these latently modifiable zones, where excess can occupy its full place, Juliette Déjoué lets participants find their own characters and playfully take part in the composition – thanks to the evocative power of objects, which are envisaged as springboards from one universe to another.

 

Camille Ramanana Rahary