Transactions

Transitions

The images from the Transitions series, by Margot Errante, impose on the viewer their magical and seductive force with a vivid and permeating tone. Infused with gentle restlessness, these images form constellations where each work leads to the next, yet without following a precise or graspable script.

Similar to film frames suspended in a dilated and receding time, these photographs seem to linger along a boundary line where past and future are intertwined, where places and nature become mirrors reflecting our most intimate emotions. The practice of taking a photograph is, for the artist, presented as the fluid encounter and interaction between the objects (wù) and the heart (xin). The heart, once purified from the burdening presence of the ego, can reflect itself into the world and view itself internally without attachment: as if it is observing itself from within and yet, at the same time, slightly from a detached outward perspective.

These frames originated from the artist’s inner journey, on the eve of her departure from China after her twenty years’ stay in the country. The photographs were taken every day, for a week, after a ritual of self-observation in front of a mirror. They are the evidence of an artistic performance without spectators. Photography is thus no longer used as a window to the world, but rather in a “reversed” manner. It becomes a magical magnifying glass, capable of bringing light to what is dark and hidden, and to bring out buried connections between our interior world and the external world, between woods of dark pine-trees and velvety petals, and between the artist and what surrounds her. The photographer, thus, accompanies us on a journey into the subconscious with an invitation, a reminder for the viewer to not be confined within one’s egocentrism, but rather to open to the Universe and be immersed within the flow of life. This will allow the rediscovery of one’s own intimate unity between the personal intrinsic nature and the living cosmos.

The artist’s images escape any kind of definition. Though faceless, they are self-portraits. Errante herself appears to be only looking from behind and, sometimes, even vanishes to make room for dishevelled bushes, or for a red dress that hovers in the night sky like a luminous apparition. Often seen from a distance, or mysteriously seen in multiples, she may seem plural and evanescent, while she wanders between the trees of a park as if she wanted to merge into the landscape.
Errante’s mystical photographs do not just catch a precise moment in time, but rather open to the unstoppable flow of life containing multiple moments like iridescent fragments. These images do not dwell on the past but, instead, refer to the future: they know how to accept change and becoming. They do not document or intend to capture anything: they are solely crystalline presences that invite us to dream and imagine possible departures towards another place where we will, once more, encounter ourselves. They are open doors towards transition, and towards the possibilities that come with existence.