NATHALIE DAOUST: KOREAN DREAMS

Whe­ther in New York, Tokyo or Ber­lin, Natha­lie Daoust (born 1977) has always asser­ted a child­like con­tempt for rea­lity. With a pas­sion for inti­macy, this Cana­dian pho­to­gra­pher, born and rai­sed in Mon­treal, has devo­ted all of her art to unvei­ling the secrets hid­den bene­ath the appa­rent sta­bi­lity of life. Daoust first broke onto the scene in 1997 while pho­to­gra­phing the the­med rooms of the Carl­ton Arms Hotel in New York. This pro­ject, her first solo exhi­bi­tion, was then publis­hed into a book, New York Hotel Story.
Since then, Daoust has crea­ted several new con­cep­tual pro­jects that have taken her all over the world, from the love hotels of Tokyo, to a bro­t­hel in Bra­zil, to a dar­kroom in Syd­ney, to the dreamy land­scape of the snow-capped Swiss Alps.
Her objec­tive as an artist is to push the boun­da­ries of pho­to­gra­phy through expe­ri­men­tal methods. While working with new medi­ums and dis­co­ve­r­ing new dar­kroom tech­ni­ques, Daoust explo­res the inde­finable realm bet­ween truth, fan­tasy and the human desire of esca­pism.
Korean Dreams is a com­plex series that pro­bes the mys­te­rious world of North Korea. Nathalie’s images reveal a coun­try that seems to exist outs­ide of time, as a care­fully cho­reo­gra­phed mirage. She has spent much of her career explo­ring the chi­me­ric world of fan­tasy: the hid­den desi­res and urges that com­pel people to dream, to dress up, to move beyond the bounds of con­ven­tion. With Korean Dreams she is explo­ring this esca­pist impulse not as an indi­vi­dual choice, but as a way of life forced upon an ent­ire nation.

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