Dork Zabunyan critiques critical discourse veiling Antoine d'Agata's photographs

In an opinion piece for artpress, Dork Zabunyan examines how critical writing about Antoine d'Agata's exhibitions Anticorps at Le BAL (January 24 – April 14, 2013) and Nòia at Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire (March 15 – April 27, 2013) obscures rather than illuminates his photographs. Zabunyan identifies three discursive regimes: the photographer's own writings and interviews, statements by curators and institutional figures, and press articles. He argues that a certain type of writing literally covers the images, making them worth less than what is said about them. Specifically, he critiques the celebration of marginality that fetishizes the margins, contradicting Michel Foucault's warning against such mythologization. Zabunyan notes that critical reception often privileges the artist's biographical experience over the depicted bodies, reinforcing a romanticized figure of the sovereign artist. This tendency, he suggests, contradicts d'Agata's own desire for invisibility and his condemnation of such posturing. The article responds to a previous interview between d'Agata and Léa Bismuth published in artpress issue 397, and builds on Christophe Kihm's analysis of 'performances of erudition' in art criticism from artpress issue 396 (January 2013).