La puissance et la jouissance is a room-size installation composed of twenty miniature letterpress printed drawings installed behind the walls and made visible only by looking through with magnifying lenses. The drawings are based on a variety of historical images that depict unconventional sexual practices such as scenes of bestiality, hard gay sex practices, representations of female sexuality, Roman mythological figures engaged in sex, and religious iconography that has been appropriated by gay culture. The piece invites the viewer to experience the ways in which certain desires were historically constructed as unnatural and consequently rendered marginal and invisible. Désirs The piece’s title references Copi’s cartoon La puissance ou la jouissance made for the Front Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire’s Rapport contre la normalité from 1971.

Installation views at Mor Charpentier Galerie, Paris, 2015

1 x 1.5″ letterpress printed drawing
Drawing based on an illustration by Shaykh Muhammad Ibn Mustafa Al Misri, Tuhfet Ul-Mulk, Turkey (1773)

1 x 1.5″ letterpress printed drawing
Drawing based on a sketch for Michelangelo’s Last Judgement (19th century)

1 x 1.5″ letterpress printed drawing
Imaginary drawing

1 x 1.5″ letterpress printed drawing
Drawing based on the photograph Lou, N.Y.C in Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio (1978)