Stéphanie Aflalo
L’amour de l’art Latitudes Prod.

Playing with the codes of how we tend to speak about Art with a capital A, two self‑proclaimed museum curators invite audiences to a lecture on intimate, disturbing painting, culturally incorrect yet poetically pertinent.

In her solo Jusqu’à présent, personne n’a ouvert mon crâne pour voir s’il y avait un cerveau dedans (Until now, no one has opened up my skull to see if there’s a brain in there), Stéphanie Aflalo cleverly hijacked the rules of philosophy. In l’Amour de l’art (The Love of Art), she hooks up with the actor/ director Antoine Thiollier to make paintings “speak,” breaking all the unwritten rules of contemporary discourse about Art. Onstage, a rope sign post separates the actors from the audience, the professionals from the amateurs. Disguised as very serious people, a laser pointer poised for use, the two experts literally force the paintings they are showing to make declarations, refusing – in spite of being somewhat ridiculous – the typically chic, sincere silence which normally represents our appreciation of the greatness of certain works of art..

L’Amour de l’art is the second part of a series called Récréations philosophiques (Philosophical recreations), “an amateur exploration of high-stakes thinking.” The first section, Jusqu’à présent, personne n’a ouvert mon crâne pour voir s’il y avait un cerveau dedans (Until now, no one has opened up my skull to see if there’s a brain in there), premiered in 2019, and the third section, Tout doit disparaître (Everything must go), will premiere in 2024.