Marie Tomanova

This Was Once My World is the autobiographical account of a return to the homeland after a decade's absence. Returning from New York to Mikulov, a Czech village in South Moravia, and the family farm, Tomanova documents her reunion with her loved ones. However, a disturbing strangeness prevails. The house she misses, remembers, fantasizes about - an imaginary refuge in the difficult moments of exile - has become an unusual, dislocated setting in which she no longer finds her place. The feelings of disorientation and loss of identity, closely linked to uprooting, are experienced in an even more conflicting way when they mark, as here, the long-awaited return "home". The series continues the exploration of the self-portrait genre dear to the artist. The date stamp of the camera refers to time, the time of the shooting which, in its precision, is opposed to the confused time of memory. Like the hero of Brigadoon, the artist is trapped in an anachronism, a subtle and powerful shift between nostalgia and lived experience.
With the support of the Czech Centre in Paris.