Exoticism Would Come from a Rotten Seashell
Coline Dupuy
Exoticism Would Come from a Rotten Seashell
This graduation project explores the imagined exotic beach that shaped my childhood on the Basque-Landes coast. Through surfwear, beach objects, and their imagery, it looks at how a Western fantasy of “somewhere else” spread through landscapes, bodies, and materials. Hawaiian flowers, vahines, so-called tribal patterns, tikis, and monoi create an appealing scene, one inherited from colonial and tourist narratives.
Project
The project takes the form of a textile diorama that moves through several states. First, the images accumulate and saturate gradually the space. Repeatedly scanned, they melt, drip, and distort. Iconic beach objects become witnesses to an imagination consumed by its own repetition. Gradually, the colours turn sour. The materials crack, the fabrics stretch, and the prints bleed. The archives then get mixed with personal photographs taken on the beaches of the Atlantic coast, at night or at dusk, when the tourist scene has pulled back. From this contamination, a second world emerges. The original patterns break apart forming new figures: membranes, shifting skins, fibrous veils, and hybrid landscapes. Shapes become more fluid, boundaries more porous. Without trying to erase this legacy, the project aims to reveal its layers, imagining a beach conscious of the stories that still pass through it today.
Caption: Viscose Jacquard knit, textile print on towel fabric, Jacquard weaving in raffia, voile and Lycra dye sublimation.
