Jessica Ragazzini

Doctoral candidate, Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) and Université Paris Nanterre

Between Wax and Flesh, the Photographs of Madame Tussauds and the Musée Grévin Visitors (in French)

Grévin Montréal in 2021
Photo: Jessica Ragazzini

Now considered as emblems of entertainment culture, the exhibitions of Madame Tussauds and the Musée Grévin have been exclusively aimed at the visitor. More specifically, the goal is to prompt them to produce photographs of which they are the staged subject among the institution’s wax figures and dioramas. Thus invited to take up a position and interact with a copy of a celebrity in a mythic décor, the visitor is led to photograph him or herself, in a sense becoming indissociable from the museum object, since the result leads one to question who among the visitor and the celebrity is actually on display. Within the limits of the produced image frame, the boundaries separating flesh from wax seem to have been practically abolished. Photographs are often considered to be tourist souvenirs without any importance for research, however these photographic fictions inform us about our current relation to the biological body. This presentation will explore the significance of these images which blur the living with the wax simulation in the case of photographs by visitors of Madame Tussauds and the Musée Grévin.

Jessica Ragazzini is a doctoral candidate in art studies (joint supervision UQO/Université Paris Nanterre). Her background in philosophy is put to good use in her transdisciplinary research about the tension residing in the reified body and the subjectivated object in photography. Since 2018, she has worked as the research assistant for the research group Origine et actualité du devenir objet du sujet : se recréer au musée, dans les expositions. In 2019, she was assistant curator for the exhibition La Robe de chair au Musée national : expositions et reconstitution presented at the Galerie UQO where she also works as an assistant. Along with the researcher Mélanie Boucher, Jessica Ragazzini co-directed a session during the UAAC 2020 titled Le double du corps : entre arts, sciences et musées. Moreover, she has given several conference talks (UAAC, ACFAS, Cerli, Stella Incognita) and published texts on the objectivation of bodies and on photography (Graat Études sur le genre & Études culturelles, Meridian of Criticism – Annals of Stefan cel Mare University of Suceava, Angles Digital Subjectivities).

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