The Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation presents “Je Vous Aime”, the first solo exhibition by Diana Anselmo, Deaf artist and performer. “Je Vous Aime” constitutes the new chapter of a broader project started in 2023 with the lecture-performance of the same name, conceived by Anselmo in collaboration with Sara Pranovi, LIS (Italian Sign Language) interpreter.

The exhibition project was born as the result of historical research developed in different archives and carried out in Turin in collaboration with the National Cinema Museum and in Paris with the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds and the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.“Je Vous Aime ” is an investigation into the relationship between pre-cinema and the history of oppression of the Deaf community. The research traverses the scenario of the late 19th century, a historical period governed by the fields of medical psychology, evolutionary anthropology and the pathologization of non-normative bodies. In 1880 the Congress of Milan, an international meeting aimed at establishing the future of the education of deaf people, established the primacy of the oral language and abolished sign languages on a European scale. The effects of this resolution are drastic and prolonged for the Deaf community: the schools will be converted from also signers to exclusively oralists, forcing sign language to be passed on secretly, away from the gaze of the teachers. In Italy, LIS will be recognized as a real language only starting from May 2021.

In this historical setting, in 1891, four years after the Lumière brothers' premiere, Georges Demenÿ created Je Vous Aime, the first chronophotographic projection ever. The image on the wall, uncertain and poorly lit, portrays for less than a second the face of Demenÿ himself in the act of pronouncing the phrase "Je vous aime". The film marks a fundamental moment in the history of cinematography, but, at the same time, represents the first coercive use of this technology against deaf people. Demenÿ's film was in fact commissioned by Hector Marichelle, the main promoter of the "treatment" of deafness with phonetic and visual techniques at the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds. In an ideological context that considers deafness a disease and sign language its most visible symptom, the first film in history was born with the declared intent of training deaf children to read lips and learn to speak. “Je Vous Aime” traces the close relationship between the birth of cinema and ableist and audist policies, tracing an invisible thread of continuity between the control of bodies of the last century and the persistence of the social exclusion of the Deaf community today. Diana Anselmo exhibits and manipulates archive images and documents from the Institut National des Jeunes Sourds, in dialogue with a new video production, created through visual sign. A poetic form typical of sign languages, the visual sign activates the visual and imaginative component of communication, through a meticulous physical construction of images. Alternating official history with minor stories, “Je Vous Aime” represents a score and a visual song for the emancipation of the Deaf community.