‘A Man in Public Space’
“I set up an experiment.
I walked in the public space of my city (Lausanne, Switzerland), and for a week I transformed myself into a cis man, into my male alter ego. With the help of make-up, wigs, prosthetics, clothes, I slipped into the skin of another, of my other. I followed men, all body types and ages, and I copied their postures and body language. Trying to decipher what is this ‘masculine attitude’, this ‘masculine body’ often referred to. And also trying to understand my own view on masculinities.
This project mixing performance documentation (b&w images), texts and self portraits, is the result of an experience that is unique to me. In the streets, in front of the mirror, I searched for answers : how will looking like the opposite sex influence my attitude and my body in space? How will others look at me?”
Karla Hiraldo Voleau
Karla Hiraldo Voleau, born 1992, is a French-Dominican artist. She works and lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. She graduated from ECAL (Switzerland), with an MA in Photography in 2018. Her work was featured at the Rencontres d’Arles 2017 & 2019, the Fotomuseum of Winterthur, or the BIP Photo festival of Liège (Belgium) in 2020. She is part of the Foam Talent 2020 edition, and of the Olympus Recommended Fellowship 2020.
Her first photobook ‘Hola Mi Amol’ was part of the Aperture First Book Awards in Paris Photo 2019, and was a winner of the Swiss Young Talents for Photography VFG 2018. It is co-published by Self Publish Be Happy Editions & ECAL. Her work revolves around identity, vulnerability and love, gender roles and the mechanisms in human relationships. She’s often her own protagonist in her series, and this position makes the work deeply personal. At the same time, she’s dealing with how women can reclaim themes that are usually associated with masculinity, like voyeurism and the gaze. She combines fictional, non-fictional and auto-fictional elements.While investigating the borders of the allowed in human interactions, love, sexuality, friendship, she stands on the thin line that separates ‘real life’ and art.
