Vérité exposée, 2006
“Vérité exposée” shows 24 times the handwritten word “vérité” (truth) on 24 xerocopies of photographs of an empty slide projection on a white wall. The fields of light appear in perspective distortion, having been photographed from a variety of viewpoints, which can be read as symbolic of different vantage points. The handwriting of the word “vérité,” too, is slightly different in each image. The French adjective “exposée” can be translated as “exhibited” or “revealed,” but also refers to the photographic exposure. Ana Torfs exposes and exhibits truth in all its relativity.
The work must be read as making a programmatic point: different vantage points, different truths are one of the artist’s major themes. Where Torfs’ works draw on historic protocols, she shows that, despite the presence of many witness accounts, we cannot prove a single conclusive truth. Neither language nor images are entirely reliable. The ephemeral projections of her slide installations create a distance between the beholders and what they see, making them aware that the picture of the world they perceive is always subjective.
The slide projections show static individual images, but as displayed in sequence they may suggest a process in time and motion; this places them halfway between photography and film. And so “Vérité exposée” is, Ana Torfs says, also an act of homage to a famous line in the French director Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film “Le Petit Soldat” (The Little Soldier): “La photographie, c’est la vérité, et le cinema, c’est vingt-quatre fois la vérité par seconde.” (Photography is truth, and cinema is truth 24 times a second.) (Georgia Holz)