Blues

Fascinated by the Shower Room—also known as the Hanging Room—Isabella Hin focused on this space dedicated to the miners’ collective hygiene, an iconic part of the mine complex. In keeping with her previous works, she has created a series of photographs centered on the blue work uniform—a protective second skin and a shield against constant dangers.

The artist drew inspiration from the heroism of the miner who, day after day, descends into the bowels of the earth. Here, she highlights the relationship between the body and clothing and evokes, in fragments, the intensity and harshness of the work. For the blue of the garment also alludes to the marks left on battered bodies. Presented in various forms—gradated, wet, torn—the fabric embodies connotations of both mourning and the divine.

Through her staging of the garments, Isabella Hin emphasizes the unique nature of these aquatic, airy elements—saturated with water, dark, exposed, at times battered, at times scarred. Large format, ultra-glossy print, and lacquered frame—the work’s form stands in stark contrast to its subject. The same dichotomy is found in the space between the moving body and the shell it sheds daily. The shower, as a liberating ritual, relieves the miner of the weight of his day; it is a transition from heaviness to lightness, from darkness to daylight.

By using hooks as a mounting system, Isabella Hin echoes the mechanisms that set the piles of clothing in motion from the floor to the ceiling. Like floating bodies pulled up from the abyss and propelled into the air, suspended in mid-air.

Text by Audrey Hoareau