page_title: Ariane Lopez-Huici
section_title: The model : an ongoing revelation
hierarchical_section_title: Ariane Lopez-Huici / Intertwining life and work / The model : an ongoing revelation
caption_attribution_description: English: black and white photograph of Dalila KhatirFrançais&#160;: photographie en noir et blanc de Dalila Khatir
context_page_description: Ariane Lopez-Huici is a photographer living between New York and Paris. Her work has been successfully presented internationally in institutions – Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Spain, Musee de Grenoble, France, PS1-Moma, USA, French Institute New York, USA, among many others – as well as galleries – AC Project room, NY, Galerie Franck, Paris -. She has received a strong critical interest from prominent art historians and writers, such as Arthur Danto, Edmund White, Yannick Haenel, Julia Kristeva and Carter Ratcliff.
  Lopez-Huici's work is focused on the human body, constantly transgressing conventional canons of beauty. To accentuate the shadowy areas of the human adventure, she uses black and white photography marked with a pronounced grain and deep blacks. Her series Aviva, Dalila, and Holly show her passion for Rubenesque bodies. Her African series Adama & Omar and Kenekoubo Ogoïre reveal her interest for any kind of physical and sensual expression. The series Rebelles and Triumph deal with a group of voluptuous women asserting their majesty.
context_section_description: She met the dancer Daniel D. in 1989, who modelled for Solo Absolu, one of her most striking series, where she photographed a man masturbating. The following year, she participated in the group-show Fragments, Parts, Wholes : The body and culture at White Columns, New York, curated by Saul Ostrow, on the theme of the body, where she presented male eroticism. Following this exhibition, the critic Jeanne Siegel wrote an article about male sexuality seen by women artists and particularly explored Lopez-Huici's involvement in her practice as a photographer : "The experience approaches the cinematic, particularly when a number of single frames are seen together.  Her participation, her watching while recording, is undoubtedly an erotic experience.  She is an accomplice in an activity that is a fulfillment of desire."
  Solo Absolu, the series on male masturbation, was exhibited in 1994 at the AC Project Room Gallery, Manhattan, USA. In conjunction with this show, "A Conversation Between Julia Kristeva and Ariane Lopez-Huici" was published, where the two artists discussed among other matters what it meant to be in a couple with another artist and the photographer's relationship to sexuality.
  To celebrate her fiftieth birthday and in solidarity with her models, Lopez-Huici placed herself before the camera, dancing naked in the 20 minutes film entitled TOAK- 1995.
  In 1999, she exhibited for the first time in Paris her Aviva series at the Galerie Frank. This series was crucial in Lopez-Huici's search for the transgressive body. Aviva, a beautiful large woman reclined or sat proudly on a bed. Arthur Danto wrote in the exhibition catalogue that "the paraphernalia underscores Aviva's identity as a model, someone who is there to be depicted, and not to represent anything ulterior. The poses too belong to the repertory of studio poses : she is not shown doing anything but pose, which of course goes with her nudity" and further "The photographistic setting is intended as a guarantor of the reality the photographs show : Aviva is the way we see her."
  During this show, Lopez-Huici encountered Dalila Khatir, a very important future model in her work.
  The following year, at FIAC, in Paris, Gallery Frank exhibited a collection of photographs of her favorite models: Aviva, Dalila, Mother and Son, Femme à la Toilette, and a new model from New York, Bill Shannon, a paralyzed hip-hop dancer.
  In 2003, she travelled extensively in West Africa, photographing the African wrestlers Adama and Omar in Dakar, the Master of Ceremonies Keneboubo Ogoïre in Mali, and Les Élégantes from Saint Louis in Sénégal. These series inspired the following comment by her friend, the critic Edmund White in an essay about her work : "She is in search of images, not the tourist's snapshots (her eye is not that passive) but rather those pictures that contest her own being or confirm her darkest suspicions or brightest hopes about human nature."  The series of African wrestlers is presented later in 2005 at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York.
  In 2004 she had two one-person exhibitions in museums, one at the Musée de Grenoble, France, and one at IVAM (Institut Valencià d'Art Modern), in Spain. Carter Ratcliff and Edmund White wrote for the respective catalogues.
  At the New York Studio School in 2007, Lopez-Huici showed a selection of her nudes, especially her most recent group series Rebelles and Triumph, with a catalogue written by Carter Ratcliff. The latter captured something very accurate about Lopez-Huici and her work when he said :
  " She is a photographer
  She is not afraid of flesh
  She is not in love with pure form.
  Nor with impure form, for she does not believe in simple dichotomies."
  In 2008, the photographer and multimedia artist Marilia Destot made the "photographic" film The Body Close Up, a retrospective documentary which revealed the evolution and artistic challenges of Lopez-Huici's photography from abstract to figurative art to a jubilant celebration of the body. The film mixed the artist's photography and her verbal commentary with musical quotes from writers 
caption: 2001 Dalila 4601-8 copyrightALH WEB copy
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