Karla Hiraldo Voleau – Another Love Story

Karla Hiraldo Voleau’s artistic work focuses on intimacy as a critical space. Gender, sexuality, emotions and the body are all subjects she tackles in her photographs in order to reveal what is played out beyond appearances. The artist stages herself in her artistic projects, thereby blending autobiographical narratives and fictions. KHV reflects on the photographic medium as a fictional tool and devises a mise en scène of the feeling of love, thus showing the way we reproduce the norms and social evaluations that are supposed to define a couple, often unconsciously. 

If reality is a lie, perhaps fiction is the remedy. KHV reappropriates her story by re-enacting it, highlighting the mechanisms behind the making of a couple. Each costume, location and image composition exists from meticulous planning from the artist, referring to call sheets and buying clothing duplicates from stores.  Her work combines photography, performance and writing, and blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, between the individual and the collective. Through this performance, KHV asserts herself as a subject and reclaims the power of her own history.” 

About the Artist

Karla Hiraldo Voleau (born 1992), is a French- Dominican artist who lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland. She graduated from ECAL, Lausanne, with a master’s degree in Photography in 2018. She participated in the 2020 edition of the Foam Talent and Olympus Recommended Fellowship. She has exhibited work across Europe and the US, including International Center for Photography, New York and Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris.