MULTI is an ongoing photographic essay that critically examines and seeks to deconstruct deeply ingrained stereotypes surrounding women and the expectations of what “femininity” is supposed to represent.
With a contemporary perspective, this series challenges our thought processes, prompting us to question our assumptions.
MULTI explores five female archetypes through a lens of irony, provocation, and discomfort, aiming to dismantle the societal “norms” that categorize and standardize women.
The project also asserts that being “this” does not preclude being “that”—an invitation to embrace the multiplicity of identities and facets within each woman.
Women's empowerment is found through exploration and conquest: an exploration of their strengths and the profound infinity and darkness of the feminine and the conquest of their spiritual ideal.
Unrestricted is a wink to the figure of the witch, the forever subversive symbol of a free/liberated woman -one that rebels against the norms and symbolic order created by men- that society tries to silence.
This piece is about reclaiming and rethinking a woman's place nowadays and seeing her every side: explorative, independent, sexually liberated and revolutionary.
Most of the time victim of social pressures related to beauty standards, singled out at any change, often judged
« too » or « not enough », the woman body seems almost no longer hers.
MULTI takes up space with audacity, these intertwined body parts, often objectified, « tabooed », that we must look and accept in their entirety.
MULTI mocks «the good manners» inculcated to women since their youngest age:
« To stay quiet, to pay attention to their attitude, their behavior, to contain their anger etc.”
When men, do not go through the same social pressures.
The underlying aim is to provoke by breaking this image of a docile woman, to question this social load that women receive very early on,
and also question the reasons of such dictates.
Deeply rooted in a society aiming at standardization and categorization, physical aspect and style of clothing represent various codes, but the main ones are firstly gender-related. And yet to wear what you want, whether it is considered too masculine or too feminine - isn’t that ultimately a way to feel free?
MULTI shows the different aspects that a single and same person can have Thanks to the wealthness and versatility of its dress style, without ever letting itself carried away by anything else than its creativity, its current state of mind without altering its « feminity »
MULTI also breaks with the notion of gender and questions its place in our societies.
The term binary refers to the categorization of individuals based on the gender of women/men distinction. MULTI opposes this concept of gender and claims other possibilities.
Credits : Models : Mutekirena / Mariana Benengue / Stessy Emelie / Sophie May / Emmanuelle JL.
MUA : Estelle Andria.