For her second solo exhibition at Galerie Xippas, Valérie Belin will present a new series of photographs of moroccan brides. The photographs were taken on site at marriages in France and Morocco.
The idea stems from Belin’s love for ceremonies, which can be seen in her earlier work, as with her series Argenterie (1994), where she photographs the ceremony of objects. With the moroccan brides, the artist was seduced by the the profusion and the decorative richness of the actual wedding and the dresses. She witnessed during the second night of the ceremony (which dures three days in all), the bride changes her dress seven to ten times. Belin discovered the variation of all the different styles and especially the ones that were extremely ornamental where the body was lost in the gown. The work has become a flat and abstract mélange of architecture and baroque that, at once, has erased all notion of perspective and volume. The artist reinforces the idea that photography is before everything, a surface of light.

Valérie Belin was born in 1964 and live and works in Paris and Vincennes, France. She has participated in numerous solo exhibitions in France and abroad (The Institute Français in Dresden, Germany and at the Galerie Vox, Montreal, Canada). She was included in the Lyon Biennial 2000 “Partage d’Exotismes” by invitation of Jean-Hubert Martin where she showed the series Bodybuilders. Most recently, she was awarded the prestigious CCF (Credit Commercial de France) bank prize, at which occasion a beautiful catalog was published by Actes Sud. The artist has upcoming exhibitions at Galerie Durand-Dessert, Paris on January 20, 2001 and at Galerie Helga de Alvear, Madrid on April 25, 2001.