THE BATHROOM | FRANCE DUBOIS

France Dubois is a Franco-Belgian artist born in 1976, who currently lives and works in Brussels.
Through an intimate and investigative gaze, Dubois explores reality, seeking to reveal what lies beneath the surface.
What the artist seeks to carry out through her practice is a kind of reversal of perception, an attempt to give shape and substance to what is intangible, invisible presences like ghosts and spirits.

Homesick (2016) is a series of self-portraits with an almost theatrical nature. In this project, the artist embodies the ghosts that inhabit traditional Japanese homes—ethereal figures of women once trapped within those walls, performing domestic duties, never free.

One of the most significant images in the series is the photograph titled The bathroom. The composition is minimalist: through a low, knee-height framing, we see the entrance to a tiled bathroom. The furnishings are nearly absent, except for a striped rug placed at the foot of a rectangular bathtub in an intense shade of purple.
The protagonist of the scene is a female figure, delicately resting on the edge. The woman, who seems to almost float in the air, has her face covered by long black hair and wears a light white tulle dress with thin straps, leaving her pale arms, shoulders, and legs exposed.

The image is dominated by geometric lines: those of the tiles on the walls and floor, the rug, and the bathtub itself. These structural elements lend solidity and firmness to the composition. However, the pastel tones coloring the room lighten the atmosphere, softening it and giving it a dreamlike appearance.

The series fits into the Japanese cultural context, setting in domestic spaces that retain a typically Eastern atmosphere: sober rooms, yet rich with memory and history, where the presence of ghosts seems almost natural, as if they are part of an ancient and spiritual world.

France Dubois
The bathroom, from the Homesick series, 2016
Digital picture, 70 x 50 cm
© France Dubois, courtesy the artist

23/10/24