Hugo Servanin

Lives and works in Paris, France

Artist statement

Hugo Servanin raises broader questions about the fate of the body in contemporary societies. For several years, he has been developing a conceptual and sculptural body of work focused on the representation of non-normative, altered bodies subjected to multiple forms of control. This work forms part of a larger structural reflection on how systems of power— wether medical, technological, economic, or symbolic—shape and impose violence onto our bodies. His work moves beyond individual figures to stage entire systems, presenting crowds of bodies so as to insist on the systemic and collective dynamics at play. The landscape always plays a fundamental narrative role in his work. The molded bodies are often placed in relation to natural elements—sand, water—that slowly sculpt them through processes of erosion or sedimentation. This dynamic materializes a diffuse, invisible violence acting by accumulation—a metaphor for the microaggressions and structural violence that bodies must endure on a daily basis. Within this context, the work engages a specific reflection on the legacy of fascism and its grip on representations of the body. The natural setting—the mountain—is not incidental: historically co-opted by authoritarian regimes as a symbol of purity, verticality, and moral and physical transcendence, it functions here as an ideological counter-field. Likewise, the chalk-white plaster bodies explicitly summon the aesthetic of Greek statuary and the eugenic imagination it has...

Artwork