There’s nothing as private and intimate as one’s bed. The designs of the bedding, maybe flowers like the ones on your grandma’s curtains, maybe pristine white. The pillows, maybe made of viscose for better sleep quality, maybe filled with feathers. And the outfits: the pyjamas, the old T-shirts, the underwear, the silk two-piece sets. Whatever your preferences might be, we can all agree there’s something sacred about the bed. The ritual, the altar, made for yourself, by yourself. Whether you’re alone or with someone, whether you’re sleeping, having sex or messing around, the bed is still a soft land made for possibilities, for dreams. Catalan photographer Pia Riverola and Mexican creative director Chino Castilla have joined forces to create a series of photographs titled La Cama, which will be on view at The Pool by Homecoming Gallery in Paris from 12 to 15 November.
Inspired by Mexican architecture, nineteenth-century painting and cinema, the pictures capture the feeling of intimacy the bed exudes. In yellowish hues, we can see colourful bedding and the bodies of those sleeping or awake in their beds. Both the colours and the textures scream Mexico: vivid, varied and also a bit melancholic, as if Chavela Vargas herself had descended from above to sing “Tápame con tu rebozo, Llorona / porque me muero de frío” to these heavenly bodies. The textures of the bedding also echo the textures of the paintings the photographs evoke. Think: La maja desnuda by Goya, Olympia by Manet, Madre by Sorolla, even Chatterton by Henry Wallis. The bed has fascinated artists for a long time, and it’s quite understandable.
La Cama, as a body of work, focuses especially on the possibilities the bed can represent: a stage where intimacy and desire can run free and play. Friends, couples, people by themselves: all of them are pictured in a frozen moment that leaves room for the imagination, combining the two pillars of desire and intimacy: possibility and fantasy. In these images, we see voluptuous bodies, skinnier ones, men, women; it’s a party for the senses, with its colours, shapes and forms, its transparencies and its hard colours.
The stillness and sometimes sleepy expressions of those portrayed enhance the possibilities of the imagination: they don’t look like objects, but they don’t express any resistance to whatever you want them to be. Maybe sleepy, maybe lustful, maybe sad, maybe dreamy. None of them faces the spectator, as if we had walked into a room that doesn’t belong to us and found a stranger peacefully sleeping. It’s hypnotic and relaxing, but it’s also intrusive and dangerous. With all of these subtleties playing with each other as we look at the pictures, La Cama turns a familiar subject into a sea of possibilities when it comes to interpretation.
La Cama by Pia Riverola and Chino Castilla will be on view from 12 to 15 November at The Pool by Homecoming Gallery, 20 rue de Thorigny, Paris.
