Faces

The sixth Art Brut biennial (2023-2024) has the face as its theme, this singular part of the human being which condenses, by its design and its expressions, the whole person, his body and his psyche. The volume that accompanies this important meeting of the Collection de l'Art Brut invites us to reflect on how the face can be understood from its mediating function for communication carried by the gaze. We know in effect the power contained in the meeting of glances and its dimension founder of the humanity of the little man through the reflection that offers him that of the people who take care of him. But, the face can also be considered from its contrasting reality of visible surface of parts invisible to humans: in this sense, it both reveals and veils the feelings and affects, thoughts and concerns… Thus, the The theme of faces deserves to be explored in its anthropological scope. In the field of Art Brut and its productions marked by a form of necessity of creation, this exploration takes on a singular dimension: the presentation of works whose figurative content offers an encounter with this inalienable part of humanity, whatever the marginality of the inscriptions social or cultural of their authors, appears in a certain way as unavoidable. These faces, whose attentive, questioning tone, communicative, absent or empty, withdrawn or searching, testifies to a modality of relationship to the world, question, in a form of mise en abyme, our own meeting the human.