Mon nom est personne presents 137 anonymous works, from the 16th to the 21st century, from the collections of Marseille’s Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (MUCEM).
Faced with the phenomena of popularity, anonymity is a complex strategy that Alexandre Périgot has been exploring for the past two years. The idea of a collection of anonymous works was born when the artist discovered that museums have a significant number of unknowns in their collections, major works that curators are often reluctant to exhibit. Alexandre Périgot felt it necessary to create an encyclopedia, an atlas, a museum of the anonymous. This collection becomes a stage for researchers, musicians and dancers to interpret works without knowing their authors. In the catalog Mon nom est personne, the fascination with celebrity is paradoxical from the outset: attraction and repulsion coexist, as in any experience of notoriety.
The practice of signature is ambivalent; it only really appeared in the 18th century, and has only recently been applied to furniture and handicrafts. Mon nom est personne reveals a fascination with celebrity that is paradoxical from the outset: attraction and repulsion coexist alongside evasion and responsibility. The exhibition and catalog question the status of these enigmatic works, but above all, impose a reflexive and subjective task on us, since we are naked in front of the works, with no instructions to cling to.
The works gathered at the Cneai under the name “anonymous” can have several justifications, and the complexity of the reasons for anonymity allows us to tell not just one story, but several. The exhibition forms a narrative about the sacralization of art, the justification of disciplines and exercises in legitimizing its value.
The title of the exhibition and of this book takes its cue from three historical fictions: Tonino Valerii’s mythical western My Name is Nobody, Ulysses’ famous battle with the Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey, and Jim Jarmusch’s film Dead Man. “My name is nobody”, these heroes reply when asked about their names. This is not unrelated to Marcel Mariën’s epitaph: “There is no merit in being anything”.