"This fashion show is a critique of the world of luxury, which both horrifies and fascinates me". - Lanette
In our society there are many paths to experiencing of beauty, pleasure and luxury. As all other notions these words are mutable constructs. And all of them have often conflicting and uneasy emotions attached to them that create a lot of anxiety and sometimes resistance to experiencing them. It is not always clear why are those notions so triggering for many of us. We talked to Lanette (Camille Correas), an artist and pâtissière who has had many experiences across the industries of both visual beauty and gourmet indulgence. Together we touched upon both light and shadow aspects of these industries.
Lanette, you have a background in both Visual and Culinary Arts. Do taste and history of certain foods still matter to you or are you merely using food as props, playing with its shape, texture, size and colour?
For me, food as a media is a vector of symbols drawing on personal or collective history. I work with the history of a food and the way it is portrayed, and I am interested in the taste. In a new version of "Fraise" I flavoured my choux pastry with smoked rose by deliberately burning the bottom of the pan of my pastry cream, associating symbols of love and femininity with something more transgressive.
I like working with the idea of good and bad taste. Today, good taste is embodied by pastries that are not very sweet, sober, without colouring agents, without alcohol, etc. There is something elitist about good taste that bothers me. For example, I love artificial strawberry flavouring, runny glazes and vivid colours. I also like the aesthetics of pre-70's pastries, which is why I am interested in candied fruit.
Your works gives off a feeling of eroticism, sarcasm and magic. I look at the leightmotif
of a tongue in your works and it my mind wonders in the direction of intimacy,
comedy and prayer amongst other things. What does the imagery of tongue mean to you?
The tongue and mouth are organs that experience the senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing at the same time. After having been interested in taste as a pastry chef, and in touch as a sculptor, I am now interested in smell. This year I have developed a whole cycle of performances combining text and scent, which is good because toungue is also the tool of speech!
Also, I never imagine a tongue on its own. I love tongues, they are both very sexy and rather disgusting, and it is this paradox that attracts me. I like to push the erotic potential of an image because it can go to the side of disgust. The mouth is an open sexual organ, like flowers, I use it as a mirror of human genitals. The thing I like the most about the tounge is that it is not gendered and active.
The marriage of food and fashion in your 'Défilé' project, what was the main message that you were trying to send out to the contemporary art world and beyond?
This fashion show is a critique of the world of luxury which both horrifies and fascinates me.
I wanted to talk about the great extravagant spectacle of the world of luxury catering, and all its hypocrisy which I have also found in the elitist world of contemporary art. I find it absurd and at the same time I am fascinated by these atmospheres where everything is fake, where people are actors and where, ultimately, only power and money count.
Lana, my grandmother, who is one of my most important references, suffered a social downgrading because of immigration to France. She never stopped trying to belong to the upper-middle class using her great beauty and her frankness. She played on all situations with her great sense of humour. Her language was vulgar and coarse, while her wardrobe was endlessly elegant. My other grandparents came from a working class background and I myself was a craftsman in a luxury Parisian palace. It made me dream, I wanted to be part of that world.
In my former job I saw a lot of follies that made me sick. I created a performance with impressive costumes made of poor and perishable materials. I wanted to show how ephemeral and grotesque all these follies are but also how beautiful they can be. These costumes are deliberately heavy and cumbersome for the performers thus criticizing the subjugation of bodies in hotel work.
Food can often be associated with over-indulgence. Have you explored this shadow aspect of pleasure and hedonism? And what made you feel like using the traditional non-edible materials for creating art aren't enough?
Many women willingly give up indulgence (like a luxury synonyme), once again the injunctions to femininity nip their curiosity in the bud. These sows are lustful characters who are not afraid to be good, fat, sexy pigs.
Food materials do not always satisfy me, because of their fragility in space and time. This is what led me to ceramic for example. It turns out that the practice is not so different: it is a soft paste that I work with using my fingers and knife. I fire it in a kiln and then coat with a glaze. There is also a big disadvantage to the gustatory work, the experience can involve risks for the visitors (diets, health risks...). Moreover, the exhibition places are not equipped for such productions. This is one of the reasons why I am now moving towards a more inclusive practice of olfactory art.
However, I do not stop using food in some of my pieces. I take great pleasure in mixing materials and the notion of pleasure is very important to my creative process, because it allows me to be generous. I want my work to build a universe of multiple experiences.
Profiteroles and Meringues. Are you intentionally playing with the idea of “french taste” or is it a genuine token of love to these, although cliche’, still mouth-watering pleasures?
By having worked in the world of the fine French gastronomy for more than 7 years, I have been completely immersed in this "french good taste". It is often associated with elegance and refinement. In my work I play with these codes that I find once again very elitist. I grew up in the Haute Savoie region of France where specialities such as 'Savoyard fondue' or 'croziflette' are made from huge quantities of melted cheese. Althouhg delicious, these dishes are anything but elegant and refined. By creating dripping, burnt, exescive pieces in their quantity I pay a sort of tribute to a regional cuisine.
In the same way, this notion of "french good taste" that constrains women to a very specific femininity has made my country deaf to many feminist advances. I have exhausted myself trying to fit this cliché of the French woman who cooks well, is elegant and sober, and who likes sex but not too much, and it is therefore with joy that I am reappropriating and diverting this notion.
You are educated in Hospitality. Do you think people find your art practice approachable and inviting because you are sharing food or, on the contrary, intimidating and provocative because they see food where it normally doesn’t belong?
It depends on what kind of people you are talking about. When I'm sharing food, the label 'contemporary art' is not particularly obvious. So, I don't intimidate people who might be intimidated by it. It's something I'm very keen on - being accessible, because until I entered art school at the age of 23 I felt very much excluded from it myself. I'm becoming more and more interested in the issues of classism that exist in this field. As for the regulars of these circles, some of them, the most snobbish ones, could indeed be destabilized by the proximity that this invitation induces, but it makes me rather happy.
What is you biggest inspiration in the field of culinary arts and why?
It is difficult for me to have any references in the culinary arts, I have worked in more than 15
different establishments, from the "guinguette" to the palace and I have never met a chef who respected his employees. In addition to low salaries and unpaid overtime, they allow themselves to exercise humiliating authority over their employees. Sexism, racism and homophobia are omnipresent in the kitchen. I don't know of a single person who is called a "chef artist" who has challenged this dehumanising system.
In contemporary art, food is a medium as ceramic or wood could be. With this medium I explore themes concerning the restaurant business because they touch me but many other artists use it differently. I recently discovered the work of Zoe Williams for example, in her performance "Ceremony of the void" she stages naked women's bodies playing with food. It's something that speaks to me and that I also like to work with because in the kitchen you have to keep everything that would refer to any form of "femininity" to a minimum. It also deals with the themes of gender, excess, the pressure of power... which also interest me a lot!
In your practice, what is more important a concept or a feeling that the work creates?
I start a piece with my feelings, they help me to get in touch with myself and people. The concept allows me to clearly express political positions. For me both are equally important.
