Isabel Muñoz
The Anthropology of Feelings / Fragments
25.10 – 30.11.2018
Thursday 25 October 2018, from 6pm to 9pm

Isabel Muñoz will be present and will sign her new book: The Anthropology of Feelings.
An exhibition curated by The Red Eye: François Cheval & Audrey Hoareau

In addition to her exhibition at the gallery from October 25th, we will also present a selection of recent works by Isabel Muñoz at Paris Photo in the Prismes section.

How not see a network of close interconnexions between several worlds in Su dance, Shiite rituals, Peul scari cations. The reduction of photography to the documentary form prevents access to a universe, that of a human community which turns sacri ce into the supreme act of knowledge. The exuberance and pleasure experienced in the solitude of pain pay tribute to the dead and the gods. Serenity and ecstasy are at the end of the journey of abandonment and violence.

If it is true that these “transmitters” are recognisable for their excess and that they show appearances which we consider grotesque, this is the price at which the body rises. We cannot access the other world without disincarnating ourselves in ours. Because they accept to become an instrument of higher powers; by offering themselves to them, Isabel Muñoz’s subjects can rejoin their ancestors, whether real or mythical.

Photography captures them when they come back to life. Which is why they must leave the ancient world. Contrarily to stereotypes, everything takes place as if an interior force guided them inescapably to their fate. Indeed, the body suffers too much from dancing, from leaving too many marks on the esh. But this does not matter; out of habit and auto-persuasion, they no longer react to the pain they impose upon themselves. Being stronger than this pain is an essential step in the creation of another me, puri ed through being deprived of sensitivity. Impassiveness de nes and reveals the pathway to the indescribable. The long-awaited moment arrives when no feelings haunt them when they are freed from all thoughts. The battles led against themselves, and the rest of the world; this stubbornness to dominate their carnal outer layer leads them to sometimes take morbid paths. Masochism is indissociable from ecstasy.

But their gaze of abandonment speaks for them. There is little complacency for the hardships they impose on themselves; only the way to separate themselves from the outer layer, this esh, this skin, is what counts.

Never mind the price to pay to nally become ourselves in the midst of the turmoil of feelings! And for passion to disappear! The silence of photography accompanies them. Their world no longer needs the imaginary or fantasies.


« It was necessary to break away from icons, with a certain idea of beauty, which is not in line with what the photographer has become today. The choice of her subjects has hardened; her approach has become more serious. It is a global quest, that of human being in general, and also that of a territory, the world. This is a subject which is dif cult to de ne. Isabel Muñoz doesn’t claim the status of an anthropologist and does not place her photography in the category of documents. More than anything, she hates the reduction of her images to simple aesthetic signs. Given an instinctive power, the work of Isabel Muñoz is like its creator: complex and elusive. »