Les Corps élastiques
Lucie Pastureau
Through photography, Lucie Pastureau seeks to capture the subtle shifts that occur within individuals, to represent what is not visible. She views this medium as an encounter with the other and is interested in periods of transition and everyday vulnerabilities. The artist views her practice as a form of research, a poetic language: she refines words, manipulates images, arranges and classifies them, and explores their narrative potential…
Having worked for many years on adolescence, and drawing on her experience of pregnancy, a year ago she launched the project Les Corps élastiques, with the support of the Institut pour la photographie, exploring the body in transformation.
By encountering other bodies—whether unfettered or constrained, each with its own unique journey—she crafts a collective narrative driven by a spirit of emancipation, reappropriation and reconciliation. The encounters and portraits that punctuate this work serve, for the photographer, as a means of making visible the complexity arising from social imperatives, standardisation and stereotypes.
Within the exhibition, texts—written or read by the artist (sound composition by Léonie Young & Olivier Desmulliez)—accompany the photographs. They open up a new dimension: that of a poetic language in which images, voices and intimate narratives intertwine.
“Some grow taller, their bodies stretching out; it’s as if they want to break free, spitting in the face of childhood and rushing headlong into adolescence. Sometimes they starve themselves to curb the swelling and distortion, thereby hastening their descent. Others, in their tangled and constrained bodies, try to come to terms with their stiffness, to make themselves lighter and to tame the pain. And then there are those who become women (and vice versa), who have always had skin that itches because it does not conform to their inner form. And then there are those others, inhabited for several months by a being that resembles them. Some are in a state of fusion, true nesting dolls; for others, it is impossible even to imagine, and their bodies try to make them forget it. ”
– Lucie Pastureau, excerpt from Les Corps élastiques
Les Corps élastiques received support from the PRAC (Projets à Rayonnement Artistique et Culturel) scheme of the Hauts-de-France Region.
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Practical information
Théâtre du Nord
4 Place du Général de Gaulle, Lille
theatredunord.fr
↘︎ Tuesday–Friday: 12.30pm–7pm
↘︎ Saturday: 2pm–7pm
↘︎ Closed on Sundays, Mondays and public holidays (except when performances are taking place)
↘︎ Please note: due to the Séries Mania festival, some events of which will be hosted at the Théâtre du Nord, the exhibition may be more difficult to access between Friday 20 March and Saturday 28 March 2026
↘︎ Free admission
↘︎ Exhibition accessible to people with reduced mobility