'You know that a flower never truly knows how it will look like after it blossoms, yet it has the intuition of growth - the organic faith in the system, and just like that what I fear I go for so I know I’m on the right track', I have always considered embodiment as reflective of one’s authenticity towards the self, and towards the world. Still,  I do believe in some kind of negative authenticity which reveals itself within the most artificial and superficial settings. This negative authenticity is what I perceive in Noémie Ninot’s work.  

Noemie and I have had, over these past few years, a sort of “ghost-like” relationship, invisible string theory.... Funny how, we were around each other this whole time with the same friends, in the same spheres and yet had never physically met prior to this (still virtual), exchange. In Noemie’s images, a somehow disembodied body prompts us to reflect upon our own physicality and relationship to ourselves within the context of distance, the artificial and the clinical. 

Cyana-Djoher: We’ve virtually known each other for 5 years now, despite having many friends in common and close geographical proximity. It’s a full circle moment we’re experiencing, as most of our conversations were based on these very topics before, incarnation, embodiment etc. Yet is this something you’re familiar with – these ghost-like relationships?  

Noémie Ninot: Not really, I believe that in our spheres it’s a regular thing to follow each other and never truly meet. Although,I often end up meeting the person, like you today.  But I wouldn’t say it is a recurring pattern in my relationships, like when I was a teenager.  

C: Physicality and interaction are important to you, I feel you. It’s quite interesting as most of your visual universe reflects upon “artificiality”, why so, and do you have an origin story of such?  

N: It might sound mundane, but I think it comes from the experience of girlhood and strict gender normativity.

In my photography, I mostly explore gender stereotypes and try to overturn codified mannerisms by reproducing them.

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Artifice allows me to emphasize and make visible these injunctions. It also allows me to constantly navigate between what’s true and what’s fake, creating a strangeness out of it. I use artifice to reveal it to itself, to expose the imperatives it contains, and thus, to subvert it. But also, I think it makes sense because as a child I could have done anything to have access to makeup and dresses, to a certain vision of femininity.

C: Yeah, me too, I felt extremely drawn to being and acting like a grown up as a child. 

N: Yes! And clothes I think played a huge part in this, it allows you to control your image, and the external perception others have of you. I was very determined to have control over the superficies of my appearance. In my work, it might be more subconscious, it’s more like I want the body to be different from what it actually is, to modify it. It remains human but it’s always augmented or diminished, deflated and then –different.

I use my body in many series and doing this allows me to get out of my body in a way. I believe that facticity helps bring more ambiguity around the body.  

‍C: I feel you. Your images are quite “uncanny valley” on some part and insinuating a sense of disembodiment while still bringing in several sensitive stages of girlhood. Is it voluntary or symptomatic of the way we grew up and are living now? How do you feel affected by your environment when creating?  

N: It’s quite natural, and organic to me. My process is very clinical, so disembodiment is necessarily implied. The distance it establishes with the spectator is a way to showcase how violent it is; it’s to be more frontal and direct.  

C: It’s interesting that you approach distance as a clinical and rational process in a way. How do you relate to the notion of embodiment then?  

N:For me, 'embodiment' refers to the materiality of the body and its external point of view – as opposed to incarnation, which refers to the flesh, the interior of the body. With my projects, I try to show the body in its different states, what it can be brought to be, and what it is not.

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The use of prosthetics, wigs, makeup, and other forms of artifice allows me to juggle between these different states and precisely question this issue of corporeality.

But as for how I feel about it in my personal life, I wouldn’t know how to answer. 

‍C: It’s okay, some things are more intuitive when experienced individually. 

N: Yes! I think that, for instance, in my projects I tap into who I’ve been and what I’ve incarnated – then I, purposely, distance myself from my own experience. Very early on we are invited to change and to adapt to others, you adjust yourself to the perception of others. I think on the daily, you embody several roles, especially as a woman, you receive fantasies and adapt until you decide to radically position yourself. To me it came through images and distance. 

‍C: And how do you manage to create this distance when using yourself as a model?  

N: In my images, my body intervenes as a medium, a material. On a daily basis I believe our bodies are also inherently receptive to alterity and external signifiers, symbols, images… 

‍C: It’s very dimensional, the 2D of the images and the 3D of an augmented/diminished body in a way…  

N: Yes! I’m finishing a new photo series right now and the process of incarnation there was completely different. I’m doing very close portraits in which I’m wearing latex masks. I’ve collected data across dating apps; I’ve asked people to describe their perfect partner. Then I reduced 300 answers to 30 portraits, while doing the series I felt like I was embodying these different faces. I had developed close proximity with my face and the faces I was wearing. It was quite intense, when going outside, I felt closer to the women I came across. It felt as if I had artificially infiltrated reality.

I like how malleable we are. Transformation fascinates me.  

C: How do you relate this malleability to trust and confidence? To me the body is a vehicle supporting us both physically and emotionally to proceed in existence, do you believe enhancive or alterative transformations are a vector of such?  

N: I feel like confidence and trust is something you embody – my work on the contrary aims at provoking distrust in a way, a sense of dispossession. And I think it’s important to say that I’m not proposing solutions in my work or in my life in general, I’m rather into tackling a social injunction and creating distance and observation, like in my Kim Kardashian project.  

‍C: Can you tell me more about it? I’m a big fan of pop culture icons being reinvested in artworks. 

N: Well, I was fascinated with this idea of “what remains after death”, the fillers, the implants. The sculpture I made is all about that. How would her body decay?

That was the main idea. I feel like if another species ever found us and our bodies or remains, they would have such a weird perception of our humanity – through the prism of body decay. Her attributes, the token of her beauty, would survive her. Ironically, what materializes her “beauty” would shallowly remain.  

C: It's a question I often ask myself; it reminds me of that concept of Hostile Nuclear Architecture, you know? It’s all about warning and signaling to future species the contamination of a site. The question is, how do you convey danger when you can’t predict the evolution of languages and signifiers? How can you warn and prevent something 10,000 years from now?

N: Yes, it’s a rabbit hole I’m fascinated about. Even in the contemporary context, I wonder about how non-human or external species would perceive us.

All images courtesy of Noémie Ninot