Harald Fernagu 

For Harald Fernagu being a killjoy is denouncing someone who disturbs the ­established order, i.e., the contemporary social order decided and calibrated by “the arbitrary logic of markets that continuously reinvents the value of goods and beings,”* which is conveyed as the El Dorado of our lives. This notion of well-being celebrates “capitalism’s scandalous frivolousness.”* The photographic portraits of members of the Emmaus community were developed with the same pleasure found in role-playing by these individuals excluded from the social order. This experience of pleasure is like a celebration, a coming to power over the logic of ­representation. It’s a “killjoy” celebration by the sheer pleasure of being. Harald Fernagu lives and works in Dijon. Since 1998 he has involved members of the Burgundy Emmaus community in his photographic practice. He also explores sculpture and questions the artwork as a social actor as well as the limits of contemporary art.

* Jean-Yves Jouannais, « De ces guerres que l’on se bricole », Semaine 09.09 :  Harald Fernagu, Paris, Galerie Martine et Thibault de La Châtre, 2009.