A young woman is trapped in an enchanted castle with a beastly creature. At first she loathes him, but eventually her heart softens. Her declaration of true love breaks the Beast’s curse: he transforms into a handsome prince, and they live happily ever after.
Though rooted in a moralising literary tradition, La Belle et la Bête resists simple binaries of good and evil. Desire and abjection, duty and transgression, ideals and outsiders are not fundamental oppositions; rather, they are intricately imbricated aspects of life and love. Such ambivalence makes for a particularly interesting fairytale, offering rich ground for interpretation.
This exhibition uses the fairytale as a lens through which to consider these ideas. Five artists have been invited to respond to this broad line of inquiry however they wish.
A screening of Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête will take place at Reference Point on 27 July, in collaboration with Drawing From Film. A new essay by Philippa Snow accompanies the exhibition.
