EXCERPT FROM THE FOLD (2023)

One-channel animation and digital video, B&W, sound, 26 minutes.

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The Fold is a visual and psychological investigation of the French psychiatrist and photographer Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872–1934). The project originated during research at Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, where Hoda Afshar encountered an archive of thousands of images de Clérambault took in Morocco of veiled Islamic women, and sometimes men, through which he sought to explore his psychoanalytic ideas about covering and fantasy.

Marking the first time Afshar has drawn upon an archive in her work, The Fold explores de Clérambault’s significance as a historical figure while also looking more broadly at the way we understand images. Through the recurring motif of a mirror, Afshar invites us to examine our own biases while viewing these images, particularly in relation to the veil.

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To assist in her investigation, Afshar brought in experts for the film component of the installation, including a forensic psychologist. The film begins with a digital animation re-imagining the scene of de Clérambault’s death – he shot himself in front of the mirror, with a camera focusing his reflected image – and leads into a sequence in which clinicians and academics offer their assessment of him. The interviews are filmed within a setting inspired by the house of mirrors in Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai (1947) and draw on the aesthetic of film noir, a style of cinema that commonly features a crime-centred narrative and morally ambiguous male protagonists.

Director: Hoda Afshar
Animation: Tristan Jalleh
Cinematography: Sherwin Akbarzadeh
Second Camera (Camera assistant?): Meg Perrott
Stage designer: Josephine Wagstaff
Lighting: Tommi Hacker
Sound recording: Kyle Evans
Sound design: Byron Dean
Editors: James Wright & Hoda Afshar
Colourist: Peter Hatzipavlis
Research Assistant: Timothy Johannessen
Participants/Performers: Danny Sullivan, Santilla Chingaipe, Justin Clemens, Andrea
Eckersley and Virginie Rey

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