Chameleon

The chameleon camouflages itself and blends into the space it occupies. This tension between what is shown and what is hidden is at the centre of Ugo Woatzi’s photographic and visual work. The chameleon is a metaphor that guides him and allows him to witness and relay a diversity of masculinities, particularly within the queer community. 

Through the idea of camouflage, the photographer questions the representation of masculinity and the daily performance it implies. Between the need to hide in a hostile environment and the claim of an aesthetic and political act, what can/should one look like in a hetero-patriarchal society? What does it mean to be a man, apart from complying with the injunction to play the appropriate role that has always been (re)presented to us as virility? How does this performativity manifest itself? 

Ugo Woatzi disrupts this injunction and stages it through bodies and symbols. His subjects, by force of circumstance, reclaim the definition of masculinity, contort and reinvent it. His work, on the boundary between fiction and reality, relates with finesse the everydayness of the violence experienced and also celebrates the power and pride of LGBTQ+ individuals.

Timour Sanli
Translation: Louise Jablonowska

Ugo Woatzi's portfolio has been selected by the Jury of the “Propositions d’artistes” competition 2020. 

© Ugo Woatzi, No Face, serie Chameleon, 2019, formats variables / © Ugo Woatzi, Voile, serie Chameleon, 2018, formats variables / © Ugo Woatzi, Mask, serie Chameleon, 2018, formats variables

Website: www.ugowoatzi.com
Instagram: Ugo Woatzi