HELENE VEILLEUX
38E PARALLEL NORD

“Tourist:

The forehead pressed against the bus window, eyes wide open to capture every inch of the city flowing by.?Clinging to my camera, accumulating postcard images with the secret hope of finally being able to confront the reality of this city nestled beyond the 38th parallel north, with the sum of the images, voices and fantasies that inhabit my mind.?

 But I’m a tourist, and the bus is already taking off again ….”

 

Hélène Veilleux "strolls" in one of the most closed city in the world: Pyongyang, North Korea ........

and she gives back postcard images that look like propaganda posters typical of the communist-era , filled with that hostility typical of that architecture designed to belittle the individual and emphasize the strength of the collective.

The power of the state on public spaces,  where architecture becomes a political statement; Pyongyang is the example of a "theater" city  where every view and  every move are designed and built to serve a "fiction state" and where every citizen has a specific role in this authoritarian “theater”.

Not being able to have access to the reality of the country, Hélène Veilleux, decides to concentrate the project  of her photographs on a simple idea: what a  country decides to show  says a lot about what this country wants to hide.

Aided by the toned images through the use of a rosy filter, which gives them a sense of almost exaggerated sweetness, and embellished with clouds that look like cotton candy, these urban landscapes, with no or few people present, make us question what's behind the long clean boulevards, the great monuments and brand new buildings,  the large statues of the always smiling leaders: these are the questions that arise from silent 38E Parallel North. 

“My creative work could be defined as a thin line between reality and fiction. I invite you to cross the 38th parallel north and "visit" Pyongyang, ... "

 Edition of 5 -  cm 40 x 60 and cm 70 x 100

 Archival Fine Art  prints  on Hahnemühle FineArt Matt 308 paper

 Mounted on 2mm dibond 

Hélène Veilleux was born in Lyon,lives and works between  Lyon (France) e Tbblisi (Georgia) -

Baikonur, Chernobyl, Transnistria ...

Hélène Veilleux's photos are part of an attempt to question the reality, exploring the concept of "Zone": its spaces, real or imagined, where everything that we take for granted it is not as much a  bit 'less” ... where  certainties crumble, giving way to something definitely ... More ......