Exposition photo ¡ Flamenca ! Cecil Ka

Mairie des 1er et 7e arrondissements · Free entry. Private view on Thursday 8 October at 5pm, in the presence of the photographer. In partnership with the Spanish Tourist Office and the province of Seville.

Every spring, at the Feria de Abril, Seville transforms. The women don the frilled dress, the men the short suit, and for a few days each becomes another version of themselves. It is this passage that Cecil Ka photographed between 2017 and 2019. Not the festival itself: the moment that precedes it, when bodies are ready and gazes are already turned towards what is to come.

Her approach is radically simple. Each model poses twice, facing the lens. Once in festive attire, amid the brilliance of colours and adornments. Once wearing a plain grey T-shirt. The images come in pairs, and everything plays out in the gap between the two: where is the person? In the coded, inherited costume, worn by an entire city? Or beneath the neutral cotton, stripped of any sign of belonging? Cecil Ka does not answer. She leaves the viewer to compose the third image, the one that exists only in their own mind.

The series has its roots in the photographer's university years at the University of Seville, where she compared two protected territories, the Camargue and the Doñana park, and the way regional costume there fashions strong identities.

Shown this summer at the Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles, at the Musée de la Camargue, and simultaneously exhibited at the Seville Flamenco Biennial, ¡ Flamenca ! makes a stop in Marseille for the festival's 25th anniversary. An exhibition that naturally extends the Focus of this edition: what becomes of us when we inherit an identity? And what remains of oneself when it is taken away?