Ophélie et Les Eaux Dormantes is a homage to Millais’s painting Ophelia (1851-52) and the exuberant nature depicted by the Pre-Raphaelites.  The branch is a simulacra of Ophelia that evokes the fragility of our humankind. Les Eaux Dormantes stands for sleeping waters, an allusion to Ophelia being the sleeping beauty, while Ophélie lies on sleeping uncertainties.

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Ophélie et Les Eaux Dormantes is part of a series taken in June 2016 on the bank of the River Thames. I was intrigued by the wide range of greens and tried to imprison a slice of it in my camera. Green is a powerful and re-generating natural color that symbolizes renewal, rebirth and growth.

 

Projecting the idea that Ophélie is a branch could seem a radical statement, but the branch is a metaphor for the drowning Ophelia and the worldwide period of uncertainty we are in.

 

Surrounded by threatening information, discovering that England chose to Brexit, I am witnessing the fragility of our position. Like the branch drifting in midwater, we live between two worlds, in a permanent oscillation that puts us into an unstable, uneasy even worrying situation.

 

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