Faces

Art Brut : The Collection is a series of books designed to accompany the Art Brut Biennials : exhibitions dedicated exclusively to works in the Collection de l'Art Brut, in Lausanne, some of which have never been on public display before. The museum was bequeathed the approximately five thousand works that Jean Dubuffet, the inventor of the term Art Brut, amassed between 1945 and 1971, and today the collection contains more than seventy thousand works of art.

This 6^th biennial exhibition focuses on outsider art works that feature the human face : a theme suggested by the exhibition's curator, Pascal Roman, who is also a professor of psychology at Lausanne University.

The face plays a unique role in human physiology, for its appearance and expressions encapsulate all that is distinctive in a person's body and mind. The works selected aim to prompt the singular experience of recognizing others in ourselves, thus inducing self-examination and offering a window onto our inner life : 'What we see looks back at us', as Georges Didi-Huberman put it.

Exploring this theme plays a major role in the field of Art Brut and its works, in which the urge to create is paramount : it draws out the essential core of the authors' human identity lying beyond their social or cultural marginalization. The faces laid bare in the exhibition invite us in their forthright, unabashed way to turn an equally frank eye on ourselves. Let us welcome the reassuring or unsettling effect of their uncompromising impact, and in this way find common ground with their creators.