Forbidden pleasures (by Charles Consigny)

“Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement. Shut that, and ’twill out at the keyhole. Stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.”

 Shakespeare, As You Like It

From behind the doors of their rooms, Cécile Plaisance’s Barbie Dolls reveal a subtle, intimate eroticism, simultaneously “Pop” and feminine. With a sense of flirtatiousness signalled by malicious glances and torrid looks, they are to be seen sporting here a Burqa, there a padded Chanel jacket, perhaps a nod in the direction of Marilyn Monroe, who famously claimed to wear nothing more to bed than a drop of No. 5 behind her ear. The sensual Barbies play with a light emerging from darkness, a light that emphasizes their big, colourful eyes with their long lashes, their shiny hair, the reds and pinks of their rounded lips. For this series, Cécile Plaisance adorns the façade of her photos with steel, reminiscent of genuine, forbidding locks, black and rusty. We see the Barbie Dolls, as if in a bedroom, through the keyhole; undressed, they allow us a glimpse of their smooth breasts and the perfect waistlines that have made them legendary. Allusive, light, metaphorical works, the photos, with their frames, play on the force of desire, the charm of secrecy, and the pleasure of the forbidden, the stolen and the unforeseen.