As an artist working with the female model, this practice-led research examines concepts of alterity and subjectivity while challenging the dominant role of male subjectivity in the western world. It revolves around the relationship between myself and the female subject, a specific woman who within the context of my work epitomises but at the same time transcends womanhood. This undertaking suggests that my representations of her body grow out of a dialectical tension between the feeling that the female other has almost become a metonymic extension of myself, and the awareness that such a feeling is at the same time illusory. The practical component of my investigations takes the form of body-themed box assemblages which are reminiscent of polyptychs, tabernacles and reliquaries. However, the sacred images which form part of these ecclesiastical items are replaced with others showing close-ups of the fragmented bodies of the model and myself. While this kind of profane artefact acts as a receptacle for our bodies which are broken down and enshrined together with other objects, it constitutes part of an ongoing process whereby the relationship between myself and the female figure is metamorphosed, re-shaped, and re-visioned. The significance of these creations is meant to extend beyond their artefactual existence and become mediums through which I re-visit female sexuality and eroticism and assess them within a spiritual context, albeit in the circumscribed framework of a particular woman. The artefact s ultimate objective is to appease my innate desire to access the other via a self-reflexive process which involves both mirroring and distancing at one and the same time. This process also includes an exploration into the spiritual with the aim of exploiting that which is other in the western theological tradition, namely God and the Divine. The gaze is also deeply involved in this exploration of the other. In fact, while our bodies are subjected to a re-visitation and trans-valuation in parts through multiplication and fragmentation, the gaze is in the process broken down into a series of glances which originate from myself, the viewer or the female subject. This process questions and disrupts the dominance of the male gaze, and its associated precepts, in Western visual culture. Finally, by correlating the model s body with the divine, my artefacts seek to give this woman, as an embodiment of the true other, a trans-corporeal identity. Rather than seeking to exert control over the other, they provide a pious space wherein the self and the other are able to encounter each other in a manner that initiates an equitable relationship, unhindered by presumptive knowledge. This is aided by the aesthetics and dynamics underlying the box assemblage which, while expressing gender fluidity and encouraging disengagement from preconceived dogmas a sort of reverse cognition also enhances the experience of its deific symbolism.

L’enjeu principal de cette recherche consiste à démontrer qu’il y a une pensée spécifique du sujet chez Kant. L’auteur repère le fondement de la subjectivité kantienne dans l’acte libre de se donner la loi. La loi éthique, c’est la loi que je me donne moi-même. Et pourtant, la loi est l’impératif qui s’adresse au moi à la deuxième personne : la loi s’adresse au moi comme l’impératif « tu dois ». En tant qu’impératif, la loi se présente comme ce qui m’est donné, et je me conçois comme celui qui est posé devant la loi. Cela veut dire que je m’éprouve, en me soumettant à la loi, comme un «toi » à qui la loi s’adresse, et que la loi apparaît comme provenant de l’autre ou du dehors. Ne peut-on pas alors dire que je me donne la loi comme si j’obéissais à la loi de l’autre qui m’appelle à la deuxième personne ? Ou bien, comme si je traitais comme un autre mon moi qui obéit à la loi ? Par l’autre, l’auteur pense à l’altérité interne dans l’acte d’auto-détermination par la loi. Bien que le moi n’a affaire qu’à lui-même dans l’auto-détermination par la loi, l’autre intervient dans la relation du moi qui donne la loi et du moi qui obéit. L’ipséité du moi constitue ainsi l’épreuve de l’altérité du moi. Que je m’éprouve dans l’auto-détermination par la loi, c’est cette épreuve de soi que l’auteur a essayé d’élucider avec Kant. / The purpose of this research aims at demonstrating that there is a specific conception of the Self in Kant. According to the author, the fundamental of the subjectivity in Kant can be found in the free will acting under the law that it gives to itself. For Kant the moral law is the law I give to myself. Nevertheless, the law is understood as an imperative that I give to myself by using the second person, that is to say that one is addressed by the moral law under the imperative form " you must ". It means that I consider myself as the "you" to whom the law is addressed. To me, the law is an imperative addressed by the other person, that is to say an imperative coming from outside. Thus, it might be possible to consider that when I give to myself the law it is the same as if I obey the other law, which is addressed to me with the second person? Or, shall we say that I consider myself as the other person who obeys the law? By the term “the other”, the author means the internal otherness existing in the action of self-determination resulting from the law. This is related to the question of identifying the enlightenment of the other’s status, which is involved in the action of self- determination given by the law. Although I have to deal with myself in the self-determination given by the law, the other is involved in the relation that opposes myself, when I give to myself the law, to me as the subject who obeys the law. The subjectivity might be interpreted as the test of the otherness existing in the Self. The fact that I consider myself as “the other” in the self-determination given by the law, can be seen as the test of the otherness existing in the Self and this is what the author aims at clarifying based on his works on Kant’s thoughts.