Cécile Plaisance is a French visual artist and photographer who gained international fame with her iconic lenticular portraits of Barbie dolls and female figures. With a keen eye for irony, feminist symbolism and fashion aesthetics, she explores themes such as female emancipation, consumption, religion, gender roles and the duality between appearance and reality. Her work is at the intersection of glamour, activism and satire.
Plaisance did not start her career in the arts, but in the business world. She studied at the École Supérieure de Commerce in Paris and worked for many years in international marketing. It was only later that she followed her passion for photography. This background in the commercial sector is visible in her work, which often refers to the world of luxury, advertising and social clichés.
Plaisance became world famous for her lenticular photo prints, in which an image changes depending on the viewing angle. Usually, one side shows a perfectly styled Barbie in haute couture, while the other side shows her in lingerie or naked. In this way, Plaisance confronts her audience with the tension between external perfection and inner truth, between social expectations and individual freedom.
Barbie, as a symbol of the image of women that has been imposed on generations, is both criticized and liberated in her work. Plaisance plays with this duality by making her Barbies not only sexy, but also rebellious, assertive or spiritual. She sometimes dresses her figures in burkas or has them pose with religious attributes, with which she enters into a dialogue about freedom, identity and hypocrisy.
The lenticular technique, in which multiple images are brought together behind a prism to form a changing image, forms her characteristic style. This medium underlines her theme of appearance and layering, and invites the viewer to interact. Her work is often described as provocative, glamorous and postmodern — with influences from pop art, fashion photography and feminist art.
Since the early 2010s, Plaisance has exhibited worldwide in galleries from Paris to New York, London, Singapore and Miami. Her work is included in numerous private collections and is represented by Art Angels (Los Angeles), Bel-Air Fine Art and Galerie Mark Hachem, among others. Her work can also be seen at art fairs such as Art Miami, Art Basel and Scope.
Plaisance sees her work as a form of visual activation: “Women don’t have to choose between being sexy and being taken seriously. We are multi-layered – and that should be seen.” By embracing femininity as powerful and multifaceted, she breaks taboos and shows that art can also be a playful form of resistance.
