Transfiguration

A historic performance that brought visual artist Olivier de Sagazan to the stage, Transfiguration has already been performed over 350 times. Dressed in a suit and tie, he unfolds the story of his insatiable desire as a sculptor—to give life to his creation. In semi-darkness, he begins a ritual in which he immerses himself in clay and lets his paint-covered hands dance across his head. This malleable, wet substance—blended with other materials like straw and branches—becomes the source of instinctive extensions and misshapen shells, blindly molded through repeated layering and erasure. A play of animalistic and monstrous hybridities emerges, involving the complete disappearance of the human face to better reveal his deepest perceptions and the hidden identities that inhabit him. A living sculpture, Olivier de Sagazan grunts and chants at the edge of audibility, kneading his next transformation, always seeking to uncover who he is beneath his masks.