Elsa Leydier’s (France, 1988) artistic practice revolves around the political charge of photography. Her recent series LUTOA (The Disobediences) is framed by ecofeminism and concerns the authorized deforestation of the Atlantic Forest. She echoes the recent spread of feminist street collages in which the word ‘luto’ is changed into ‘luta’ in black paint. In Portuguese, ‘luto’ means mourning and ‘luta’ means fight.
Currently, only 8% of the surface which covered Brazil when the Portuguese invaded, remains. The construction of the new industrial port that is currently underway further destroys acres of forest and the seabed. With this project, Leydier speaks of the raise against such injustice and points at the connection of climate change to the economy.
The artist highlights that the frames for her works were made in China. Even with the best environmental approach to materials, in a work calling out about an ecological disaster, Leydier demonstrates how the whole system is interlaced: materials from Latin America and a cheap labour force from Asia. In LUTOA (The Disobediences), Elsa Leyider poses a question whether the entire system, rather than the individual behaviours, should be destroyed in order to make a change.
Elsa Leydier’s recent exhibitions include Jeu de Paume outside-the-walls (Le Cellier, France), Festival Encontros da Imagem (Portugal), Festival Photo Climat (France), Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie – Fondation Manuel Rivera Ortiz (France), Atelier Noua (Norway), Hosoo gallery (Japan) among other shows in in Colombia, the US, the Netherlands, Portugal and France. Elsa Leydier was one of the finalists of both FOAM Talents 2020 and 2019, Dahinden – Photo Climat Award 2021, a laureate of the French national Photographic commission Image 3.0 (2020) and for the Mentorat Des Filles de la Photo (2020-2021). In 2019, she won the Prize Maison Ruinart Paris Photo 2019 and was one of the winners of the Dior Photography Award for Young Talents.