“My work revolves around the notions of trace and memory, what I call the fantôme réel, a pictorial reflection around what remains of an existence or an event. Each trace left in any form whatsoever is a precious clue that allows us to get a more or less accurate picture of what may have happened. My approach is above all, an observer; I collect, contemplate and photograph each detail that touches me, which could by its mere presence tell a story. I want to make dead objects speak, to give them a voice where their usefulness has vanished.

Everything we touch, everything around us is an extension of our own body; the landscape, the buildings, the objects are extensions. We could say that they are the inorganic organs of our existence and thus testify to our experience after our disappearance.

It is mainly through argentic photography that I build my work. I see it like a specter, a moment that will never be again, the famous «ça a été» by Roland Barthes. It is an apparition, created by the light that becomes an image, it is materialized. This idea of matter also persists in other experiments, because it is the matter that is marked by the time, thanks to which on the guess traces and make them talk.

My research is at the same time archeological, artistic and materialist. It is the interpreter of a past, mine, that of others. We can not build an après without knowing the avant. We walk in a world littered with stigmas that help shape us.”

Artist statement

Hélène Thiennot was born in 1988. She lives in Lingolsheim.