Cecile Plaisance

Plaisance is an audacious presence on the contemporary art scene, and her large-scale photographs reconstruct the lives of ordinary women, now as objectified toys, and perfect supermodel personalities. Her captivating artworks question the realities that women experience and the facades they adopt. Their kinetic quality adds dark humour, and opens a sexy and surreal window into the mind of this fiercely feministic artist.

The contradiction between the female image as one of giving pleasure, and the role women play in modern society as mothers and workers is pictured in vibrant, electric Pop splendor. Whether dressed up as traditional housewives, or as James Bond’s accomplices, Plaisance’s women are dramatic and defiant.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the incendiary relationship between women as objects of violent desire, and the obligation to live in a controlled society. It’s surely paradoxical to magnify objects of desire, from childhood no less, a process that implies a good deal of barbarism, in a world of immediacy in which the need to satisfy our whims is growing exponentially,” Plaisance says.

In presenting the extraordinary artworks of Cécile Plaisance in South Africa, the Daville Baillie Gallery continues in its quest to bring local art lovers and collectors face-to-face with the finest examples of international Pop Art. We are the only gallery in South Africa working on such a scale, within the international contemporary art scene.