Illusion - The Myth of the Vahiné through gender Disphorya

 NAMSA LEUBA

Illusion - The Myth of the Vahiné through gender Disphorya

LIVE NOW until - October 7, 2020

Swiss Guinean Photographer Namsa Leuba is back for another exhibition with Boogie-Wall following the group exhibition Notre dame / Our Lady in fall 2019.

For the first time the artist’s work has been digitalised to offer you a virtual exhibition included some unseen works from her recent project, Illusion.

The Serie Illusion, was created in Tahiti and inspired by the paintings of Paul Gauguin and “tropical” images in Modern art, which occupy the Western collective unconscious.
This type of imagery casts the Polynesian woman as beautiful, desirable, subservient, and connected to the natural environment.
This myth of the “vahine”, as Polynesian women are referred to, is historically rooted in the West’s search for the “original” and “authentic”, which was thought to be found in far away cultures, with a connection between the body, soul and land.

The subjects in Leuba’s contemporary portraits act out their role of the “vahine”, yet through non-binary definitions of gender conformity. Her sitters are known in Tahiti as “Mahu” (an effeminate man) or “rae rae” (transgender).
Leuba stages the fictional narratives with a painterly sensibility. The models distinguish themselves with colorful cosmetics and body paint, creating a surreal sense of beauty and strangeness. They blend into nature, like creatures between myth and reality. They symbolize their identity through the incarnation of the spirit, by the image beyond the confines of the body.

We invite you to immerse yourself for a memorable virtual exhibition experience, by clicking the link below!

https://onlineviewingroom.com/exhibition/e000941/

@namsaleuba, @boogie_wall @walterscube