Les Eaux de Peau

Often represented in medieval tapestries alongside a young woman in a flowery and fragrant garden, I am an imaginary animal, wild and solitary. My immaculate body is that of a fabulous white horse. Wearing a single, twisted poison neutralizing horn on my forehead. My ivory is sought after because it purifies the waters of its magical power. I embody love and mystery. I only appear in the light charged with the dynamic energy of my supernatural strength that only creative minds can perceive. Can you dream hard enough to see me? Because I am the animal that never was. BLANCHE BÊTE is my legend.

Since the 17th century, philosophers have dreamt of defining humans' relationship to animals". Whether I am called “Homo sapiens”, “Modern man”, “Mankind”, “Human” or “Human being”, I am an animal. A wild man, a mythological figure in literature and art. I am the link between civilised humanity and the Elven spirits of an untamed nature. I live free in faraway lands, mysterious forests and boundless plains. My skin and my fur are both my weakness and my protection. I live naked, wearing only my scent which is that of nature. Ice-cold rivers, resinous forests, blazing rocks heated by the sun, carpets of leaves where I sleep. I am hunted and a hunter, like a beast. Driven by fear, armed with strength, cloaked in my scent. I am a man with a lion’s heart. BÊTE HUMAINE is my species.

You know me without knowing me. I lived for a long time in the radiant heavens, before I was condemned. The night consoled me for my loss of the sun. Always victorious, I remain immortal, forever young. I move at the speed of thought, my spirit is volatile, like the money I like to spend on frivolous things. I transform the material into the immaterial. I hide and overturn what is real with my powerful imagination. At night I lie, enchant and disturb. I delight in dark, urban and smoky atmospheres ,on the damp paving stones of cities crowded with souls and hearts ready to be stolen. I walk through the dark proudly ,a red carnation in my button hole. I am invited to the grandest parties, where the whiff of gin and gulps of absinth cloud humans’ minds. My greatest trick is my perfume, an olfactory trace of my adventures, my loves, my confessions, my excesses. I am willing to grant youth is unique and sulphurous scent that trails behind me if you give me a kiss, full of your hot breath and weightless soul. I am an angel and yet I am called a demon…