République des Images is the hypothesis of a world of images, autonomous, strange and fluid, like an infinite ocean where the peoples of images are relentlessly trying to escape chaos, find a common meaning and rebuild a democracy. Through this speculative fiction and these compositions of images, the artist metaphorically questions the digital age: how it liquefies the material and immaterial architectures of the world, upsets and disorients... the better to savor its visual poetry.
"In the world of images, we were still trying to understand how the situation could have deteriorated so quickly: the overflow, the rising oceans, the deluge of data, the torrents of the new generation... Everything had to be rebuilt..."
République des Images is also the name of Raphaële Bidault-Waddington's image laboratory, in which she explores the intricacies and imaginaries of Web 1, 2 and 3, and more broadly the digital transition that is profoundly transforming our world. Strongly influenced by electronic music, emblematic of the digital age, she works with hundreds of photographs captured in cities around the world. These images become samples with which she composes virtual visual architectures, whether analog, digital or animated. These pictorial constructions plunge the viewer into an abstract, evanescent and delocalized sphere, manifesting the invisible cloud of data that envelops the planet. This imaginary, non-Euclidean multiverse also evokes reminiscences of the past that have been swallowed up in the world's memory. République des Images asserts that, in an age when images abound, the unique and singular value of Art lies as much in composition and architecture as in the creation of images themselves. As in his other laboratories, RBW explores how art, images and aesthetic experiences invite us to reflect on the world, to investigate imaginary and cognitive landscapes, and even to project the future. An atypical artist and 360° creative researcher, RBW cultivates an ecosystem of research and creation ("slow art") structured into laboratories, each with specific formats (photomontages, installations, diagrams, drawings, textile creations, texts, conferences) and exploratory themes. His work has been exhibited and published in France and internationally in venues and media such as Institut Français d'Architecture, Paris Project Room, La Villette, Colette, Apex Art (New York), Over Gaden Art Center (Copenhagen), 78 Lyndhurst (London), Les Cahiers Européens des Imaginaires, Revue Pylône (Brussels), d-fiction.fr, among others. Through her ideas laboratory, she is also an author, futurist and lecturer, and participates in numerous research contexts in France and internationally on trends, transitions and futures in the contemporary world.
