For all, the navel is the inner center even if it does not have the same symbolic representation for a man and a woman. The belly can be likened to instinctive impulses and also evoke the inner world. It is the trace, the passage from one world to another, an indelible link as the continuity of Man.
In the present-day Western imagination as in primitive mythologies, fantasies and drives take on a zoomorphic character: the animal represents the intermediate being between the unspeakable and humanity, between unconscious anonymity and subjectivity, as collective unconscious including a form of anonymity, meaning elective of repressed instincts.
A human being is determined by its singularity, an animal is determined by its membership in a species. By moving from humanity to animality, we reach the register in which the boundaries between each Moi are fading away from the others (for example, to grab the power of an animal by identification with the animal).

Painting on the bellies was a completely different experience of the backs. This time we were face to face! I wondered how each of us would react, if the eyes of one and the other would be an obstacle, because it is not so easy to be touched belly, sensitive part of the body. It was an interesting experience, I was surprised by the investment of people some of whom entrusted me with objects that they hold dear. In Lanzarote, the language barrier was no obstacle (I started learning Spanish on the spot) despite my fears.
Act II took place in two phases of painting on the belly, around the navel leaving it intact, as untouchable. We must see the navel in the center of the painting as an eye: the look of our inner world at the same time as the look on the outside. I also kept, in photo, the skin around the painting (unlike the paintings of the backs that were cut), another eye encompassing the eye-navel.

The prints were made by transfers on cotton canvas, more flexible than the paper, which allowed me to take the imprint in full.

The questions :

Phase 1: If an animal were to represent you, what would it be?
Phase 2: what does it represent for you?
Phase 3: And to answer the question: what is its attribute? or what do you attribute to it? I ask them to give me an object (organic or not).

The song "le navel" (Norge / Philippe-Gérard) sung by Jeanne Moreau will accompany this work and will be part of the exhibition. Ed. Majestic - (p) 1981 Productions Jacques Canetti.

The exhibition :
The pictures of the painted bellies have been enlarged to be the same size as the transfers (30 x 40) and glued on cardboard. Two sticks are stuck on the top and bottom of the transfers, hooking with pliers. Photos and footprints of the same navel are staged together with the inherent object, to allow a unity in the interpretation of the animal, in the form of "tables". This object is the material representation of the person. The proposals are printed on paper pasted on cardboard and positioned above their representation (photos, transfers, objects). The object is suspended in the center between the two phases of painting.