Manon

Her photographic series and photo-performances reflect the gradual elaboration and metamorphosis of her persona—Manon. The figure presents itself—or she presents herself—in serial masquerades of potential identities, and variously as a sexualized body, an androgynous character, or a cross-dresser (La dame au crâne rasé, The Lady with the Shaved Head 1977–78; Elektrokardiogramm 303/304, 1979). More recently, her self-portraits are pervaded by fragility, age, and illness (Borderline, 2007; Hôtel Dolores, 2008). This tension between intimate space and its dramatization, personal experience and artificial appearances was the base note in her first ever work, Das lachsfarbene Boudoir (The Salmon-Pink Boudoir, 1974). The luxuriant cosmos bursting with rhinestones, lingerie, feather boas, and fetishes, a sheer explosion of encoded hyper-femininity, was her own bedroom. 

Manon also pioneered the practice of performance as a staged tableau or installation, creating immersive environments or edgy voyeuristic scenarios to investigate male-female power dynamics, exhibitionism, and role reversal. Inter alia, she has locked herself up with visitors for an eye-to-eye interrogation, posed in chains as a captive femme fatale, and put six men in a store window display, as objects of desire.

Manon chose her name in order to be rid of her father’s (or husband’s) surname, allying herself instead with feminism’s second wave, which reclaimed the body and sexuality by performative means. To this day, she deploys provocative readings of female existence as a feminist strategy, challenging heteronormative roles and constraints, and exploring how the gaze can make or break patterns of objectification and power shifts. 

In addition to her work of photography and large-scale installation, Manon continues to fathom her field of existential inquiry by writing every day.