Between the age of 4 and 14, her family moves 13 times.
The unstable living situation creates a sense of loss and sheer abandonment.
Her answer to this world where she is unable to find her marks is to give life to all objects surrounding her. From an early age, she begins to create parallel worlds, the kind of simple and naive environment only a child can imagine. These recreated worlds are going to be her first source of inspiration to what will later become works of art such as “ Mes amis Taxidermisés”( My Taxidermised Friends, 2001) , “ Mes Amis dans des Boules à Neige” ( My Friends in Snow Balls, 2002)“, Toi Aussi Collectionne les Bunnies”( You Too, Collect Bunnies, 2003).
Manywild was born in Paris in 1976.
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From the age of 12, with the urge to keep a trace of her environment, Manywild starts listing everything that surrounds her with the help of an Hanimex she recieves of her grand mother.
After having spent ten years in the country, where she writes for herself and rethink the world through articles in fanzines, Manywild moves back to Paris. The discovery of such artists as Sophie Calle, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Nan Goldin, Paul MacCarthy and many more inspires her to create, putting her in this sphere of influence where intimacy becomes universal.
In order to nurture this oddity, she decides to study art and enrolls the University of Paris VIII that she completes in 1998. During this time, she develops a sense of estheticism that brings us back to the quest for fallen perfection, like a “Barbie doll who would throw herself out of the fifeen floor”
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She then starts to scenarize the bitterness that life is in her photographic comic books in which dolls speak up...( Little Cruel Fairy Tale of Ordinary Life) ( Love, what is it?) ( Very Nasty Girls) or in the photographic series “ The New Superman” in which she depicts her quest for the ideal man.
Manywild needs to live her life the same way a movie is being made. Paying constant attention to details leads her to always try new media such as video (creation of the duo « Les Enfants de Cocteau » with Cédric Moreau) singing ( the band “Les Perruques Raides” played numerous festivals all over the country), acting: (she is often the main character in her work)
She is using as many media as possible in order to make sure she is not missing out on anything that could translate her emotions and her need to tell the world.
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These rich and diverse experiences will contribute to shape the uncompromising tone of Manywild’s work. Today, throughout her work on ‘object books’, her road movie like photographic diptych ‘Les Petites Filles Modèles’ , Manywild keeps on carving up reality in a way only a butcher’s daughter knows how.
Curious, always craving enlightment, Manywild decides that since she has to work to substain her art, she will try everything: From 1994 untill now she will work as a nutritionist, auxiliary nurse, salesperson, photo laboratory assistant, dressmaker, costume designer, waitress, photo model, hostess, bar manager, bookshop assistant, theatre photographer, assistant photographer, movie set photographer, actress, wardrobe assistant for Yves St Laurent, butcher on the markets, barmaid, cinematographer, painter decorator on set...
Betty Cooper
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From anecdotes to the universal, or how to be saved by tales.
My work originates from my private circle (my surrounding, everything that happens to me) but also within the most intimate sphere that is my mind where i draw my hopes and my disillusions, and from which i recreate a perfect world (not in the sens that everything goes for the best, but more like a place where i would have an omniscient hold ).
Everything that touches me (both literally and figuratively) is feeding me, so i go from a private sphere to a public one by scenarizing the elements that are surrounding me, trying to integrate them into a universal reality.
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Every single element is important if we want to scenerize the raw material that is life, your own life, and i am doing this with an extrem awarness : i want to remember everything, i don’t want to miss a single thing, as insignificant as it might appear.
The very notion of “what happens” is so important to me that i feel a compulsive need to recreate these scenes, these stills, to keep them in. The writting process has a very important role. Everything is carefully written in details before i start carrying through.
The medium used is also fundamental: i’ll use different ones if necessary (objects, photography, video, texts)
but always in a symbiose, as a way to translate the idea as precisely as possible.
My productions are not self absorded, they are opening themselves to the world in order to find an echo.
Thanks to them (or through them) i can project myself towards others, to confront them and feel closer, because if not everyone daydreams, everybody feels the need to dream and the desire to listen to stories...