Sophie Ellis
Thesis Title (PhD)
BIENVENUE RE-VIEWED: REPRESENTING AND REFRAMING HOSPITALITY IN CONTEMPORARY FRENCH VISUAL CULTURE
Mythologised since the Revolution as ‘la nation hospitalière’, France has bore witness in recent years to events which call into question the status of its ‘guests’ and its (in)hospitality towards them. This project examines contemporary visual culture in this ‘universal host’ and world leader in cultural production to ascertain how hospitality is represented and reframed within it. Through a cross-media analysis of selected 21st-century works encompassing photography, sculpture, installation and collage, this project will illustrate not only what French visual culture suggests about French hospitality today, but also how it informs an understanding of hospitality itself in relation to three key areas: place, sex and the non-human. By foregrounding artists configured as ‘guests’ in France and works which challenge traditional parameters of hospitality rooted in heteronormative, imperialistic, patriarchal and anthropocentric ideologies, this project will seek to uncover new possibilities for hospitality, illuminating artists’ redefinition of the concept and its practices in engagement with the contexts of 21st-century France. Namely, it will argue that French visual culture provides a forum for the revitalisation and expansion of the problematics of hospitality in relation to place, sex and the non-human, welcoming forward-looking articulations of hospitality which may inform the future of la nation hospitalière.