Morgane Ely, Pink Spring

Winner of the Villa Noailles Prize in the Emerige Revelations in 2023, Morgane Ely presents an exhibition developed during her residency at Villa Noailles in Hyères (July, August, and November 2024), composed of 29 wood engravings and a diorama.

A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2021, she undertook an exchange programme at Musashino Art University in Tokyo, Japan, where she learned the wood engraving technique rooted in traditional Japanese printmaking, which she now uses in her works.

The black walls create an intimate atmosphere that reveals portraits of young women in the throes of carnal pleasures, akin to the first flowers of spring on the verge of blooming. Blending eroticism and lust, these images, inspired by binibon (ビニぼん), Japanese erotic magazines, portray a fantasized vision of Japanese women. Morgane Ely revives an ancient tradition, that of shunga (春画), pornographic prints that depict bodily pleasures, dating back to the Edo period (1603 to 1868). Up until that time, eroticism in Japan was not transgressive, and there was no sexual taboo in Japanese cultural consciousness. However, with the Meiji era (from 1868 onward), the arrival of Westerners, scandalized by such unrestrained attitudes, radically shifted Japan’s relationship with nudity and sexuality. The Puritanical Western model took hold, leading Japan to experience heightened sexual repression and harsh censorship of shunga.

This Western influence, which profoundly affected Japanese customs, is still felt today. Although Japan has a particularly flourishing and inventive pornography industry, it remains paradoxically highly censored: genitals must never be visible. In the portraits displayed here, the genitals are indeed blurred out.

In her practice, Morgane Ely reclaims images, primarily from the internet, of feminine figures that she elevates as feminist icons. She repurposes the technique of traditional Japanese printmaking by displaying her carved and inked wooden blocks, originally intended for multiple prints but here presented as unique works. This traditionally rigorous and codified practice, both in gestures and subject matter, is reclaimed by Morgane Ely. She uses these popular erotic images, akin to the orion of a new era (orion (花魁), “first flowers,” refers to courtesans of the Edo period). The binibon themselves are a reinterpretation of Western magazines for men. The photos found inside invite a dual male gaze: these women are perceived through the Japanese male gaze, which itself is influenced by the Western male gaze. For decades, censorship and male dominance had such an impact that it was implicitly understood that women should not assert their sexuality, instead adopting more passive and submissive poses. Among these languid figures, a young woman shamelessly displaying her underarm hair draws attention. She is Kaoru Kuroki, a Japanese pornographic actress famous for her proud assertion of sexual freedom on television at a time when female representation in pornography was distinctly sexist. In Japan, armpits evoke the feminine sex; as genitals must be censored, exposing armpits is a provocative and indirect way to circumvent this censorship through the power of suggestion. Kaoru Kuroki thus emerged as a true feminist icon. Toru Muranishi, a pornographic film director, once said of her, “It was several centuries of feminism and emancipation in Japan propelled by the effort of a single person.”

At the back of the room, a life-sized diorama presents itself to the viewer, though inaccessible. Through a pink veil, one can observe a print workshop, an insight into the artist’s lifestyle in her studio. Traditional printing tools, personal and everyday objects that one might assume belong to Morgane Ely, and traces of studio life are laid bare, revealing visible debris and disorder. Is this the artist’s imaginary studio, a hybrid space where the personal seeps in? While shunga and binibon litter the floor, one can glimpse faded drawings on the walls, inspired by flyers advertising escort services, distributed at night in Tokyo’s “red-light” Kabukicho district. The presence of stereotypical objects from Japanese culture likely references the concept of Japonisme—the 19th-century artistic movement characterized by Western artists’ appropriation of Japanese aesthetics, now criticised for its appropriationist nature. Fans, a tea set, and sake glasses evoke the Western fantasy of Japan. The sake glass, in particular, seems to serve as a clue in a game of spot-the-difference: this small glass—perverse—revealing a nude woman when filled with alcohol is anything but Japanese. A popular item in all-you-can-eat Asian restaurants, it was invented to satisfy Western fantasies at the end of a meal where sushi and roast pork coexist without obvious distinction. Perhaps this scene should be viewed through the lens of fascination, like a vision blurred by sake, revealing a pornographic image.

Morgane Ely offers the viewer a glimpse into her creative process, materialising her inspirations and reflections within a fictional studio. In this fantasy space, she playfully subverts sexist clichés by reclaiming imagery traditionally created by men, for men.

Céline Furet