Éric du Bellay

ÉRIC DU BELLAY (Chatenay Malabry, France, 1980).
"Cumba la Prisonnière (The Prisoner)," Corps Vibrants Project, 2019.
Digital print on Hahnemühle FineArt Extra Mat Lab paper.
Attached certificate issued by the author.
Presents slight marks on the paper.
Signed, dated and located (Paris) on the back.
Measurements: 33,5 x 50 cm; 37 x 53 cm (frame).
This session with Cumba is one of the most significant and successful moments of the Corps Vibrants series. Unlike other sessions of the project, the artist chose on this occasion to work with a single model, which involved a process of both formal and conceptual experimentation. During the session, various textile elements -scarves, velvets and different fabrics- were used to introduce a scenographic and symbolic dimension to the composition.
Cumba, an actress with a strong stage presence, brings a particular intensity to the image. In this session the artist also reused the white strips he had previously worked with in the session with Anna and Vladimir, thus establishing an internal dialogue within the series itself. The initial idea was to represent the model as a prisoner figure, visually exploring the tension between containment and liberation. However, the final result transcends this initial narrative premise and acquires a more open and evocative character.
The image suggests multiple levels of interpretation: Cumba's figure appears trapped, but her gesture and her presence turn this condition into a symbolic space that refers to broader issues related to identity, the social gaze or the structures that condition human experience. In this sense, the work transforms an apparently concrete situation into a more universal reflection on the human condition. Presented as an artist's proof, this photograph is offered today as a testimony of that instant suspended between oppression and emancipation, where the vibration of the body and gesture becomes the true expressive core of the image.
Éric du Bellay took up photography at the age of fifteen, developing his own black and white images. From the beginning, his work focused on faces and bodies, as if seeking to preserve the trace of the living. He then temporarily abandoned photography to pursue a career as a filmmaker. He made six short films in France and Iceland and his first feature film, Menina Casilda, was shot in Madrid in 2021. In 2019 he returned to photography with his project Corps Vibrants, a series of nudes shot in studio in Paris. This was followed by his second project, Libertad, started in Madrid in 2021 as a response to the restrictions resulting from the pandemic. Influenced by the works of Marina Abramović, Ren Hang and Ryan McGinley, his work explores representations of the naked body in movement, situating himself in a territory where performance, photography and the exploration of contemporary corporeality converge.