Marcelline Delbecq

Daleko (Far away), 2008

Print on framed paper (63 x 107 cm, with frame: 66.8 x 111 x 4 cm.), wooden bench, sound element on CD (5'58'').

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Daleko is a work at the crossroads of the visual arts and writing, symptomatic of an artistic work that never ceases to interweave the two fields. Invited to take a seat on a bench, which also appears to be a wooden chest that cannot be opened, the viewer is confronted with a photographic landscape, very dark if not a brighter circle, as if this riverside were the only place where there was daylight, or as if a spotlight were shining on it. By association, this clear gap allows us to better perceive the rest of the image, which remains in darkness.

The audio narration is spoken by actress Elina Löwensohn, with her Romanian accent. In this text, which seems to be addressed to us, we hear about an event that may have taken place in the highlighted part of the image. It's about woodcutting, painting, point of view...

It's up to us to become actors in the work, imagining the missing parts of the narrative and creating our own personal cinema. This gentle way of involving ourselves is a frequent feature of Marcelline Delbecq's work.

The work was created for the Musée Zadkine, in Les Arques, in 2008. Its Russian title, Daleko, meaning "far away", encourages our imagination to weave links with the Belarusian landscapes where the sculptor grew up.

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Marcelline Delbecq

Born in 1977 in Evreux (FR)

Lives and works in Paris and New York

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Marcelline Delbecq studied photography in Chicago and New York. She completed this American training at the École supérieure d'art de Caen and at Paris X-Nanterre, in exhibition art.

More recently, she defended her doctoral thesis "SACRe" at the École normale supérieure under the supervision of Antoine de Baecque. Her research focused on movement in the still image, using a photograph by Ellis Island immigration worker and amateur photographer Augustus Frederick Sherman. Titled Untitled Woman, Ellis Island, 1905-1920 in the collections of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the image had never been shown before. The thesis is complemented by a short film, Mille années de main en main (une odyssée), a portrait of Turkish poet Sevinç Çalhanoğlu, an illegal immigrant in Donald Trump's America. A way for Marcelline Delbecq, through writing, image and voice, to retrace the steps of an anonymous young woman known as "Untitled".

Very early on in his career, writing, with its cinematic potential, was a consequence of his reflections on photography. Since 2015, it has even become essential, chosen for the creative freedom it offers, far from the constraints of the art world.

Marcelline Delbecq puts into words, and also into voice, a universe between description and fiction. In images, in writing, and between the two when she juxtaposes them, she creates space and stimuli for our imaginations, always with an acute reflection on point of view and address.

In her articles and books, she tackles art criticism, interviews with other artists and fiction in equal measure, always with an essential link to the image. Among the latest: Beyond Sound, interview with Pascale Cassagnau (Daviet-Thery éditeur, 2018); Dialogue, interview with Ellie Ga (Shelter Press, 2017); Oublier, voir (Manuella/Fondation Cartier, 2015); Camera (Manucius, 2015), Silence trompeur (Manuella, 2015).

Marcelline Delbecq is also a translator.

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