The series Huis clos confronts us with a suggestive confinement. What happens in us when we are faced with a desperate situation ? What do we feel when we no longer have a connection with the outside world ?
Disorientation and loss of contact with the outside world put us into a physical and mental isolation and can lead us — in a conscious or subconscious way — to modify our relationship with the external reality.This maze slowly conducts us into a mental illness.
There is several perspectives to this series. Figuratively, this photographs confront our reactions to confinement. When we loss contact with the outside world, isolation is physical and psychological. Mentally, it is difficult to keep a psychological wellbeing in this conditions. In philosophy, Aristotle says that humans are social animal. We are used to be part of a society, to interact depending on it from birth. Staying alone, enclosed, deprived of mobility conduct us ineluctably into a psychosis, a deep suffering hard to bear.
Huis Clos tell us about the loss of bearings. Humans tend to be committed to a routine, places, people, job. When an aspect of our life change, we have to make an effort to rebuild ourself to feel comfortable again. But it can be very difficult to attend, so we can feel powerless, meaningless. Here, the desert interiors them self lost their meaning. They slowly deteriorate whilst resisting over and over. Door after door, room after room, we find ourselves enclosed in a maze of repetitive spaces marked by the time. Wallpapers indicate a past presence, a faded animation. We are like enclosed in a memory simultaneous sweet and disturbing.
This is a work which talks about human and his feelings without portraits, without a sign of him. He’s here and absent. We understand his past presence, we can see ourself in this places. We cross it, we search something, maybe a way out. We wouldn’t like to be too much longer here searching our way between all this walls without windows, without a view on the outside. We are lulled by the fascination of a special beauty and anxiety.
About Kathleen Meier
Kathleen Meier is a french photographer based in Nancy. She is graduated to the artistic school Ecoles de Condé with a special mention from the jury for her work on the narrative potential in fine art photography. Her photographs are psychological. Through her subjects she reaches our mental activity, brings out our feelings, forces us to face our fears and desires. She appeals our imagination so that everyone have a full part to play in her work. In 2015, she releases her first book ‘Hostilités sourdes’ at APR2 Publishing. [Official Website]
