Grotesques (A, E, I, O, U, Y)

Grotesques (A, E, I, O, U, Y) is a series of six drawings by Geoffrey Badel, depicting faces caught in the midst of a grimace. Each drawing, composed in a square format and shown in close-up, is associated with a vowel (A, E, I, O, U, Y), forming a minimalist, repetitive sequence that immediately evokes the process of learning to speak.

This formal choice reflects a violent political history: following the Milan Congress of 1880, French Sign Language was banned in education, forcing Deaf people to learn to speak. This mandate to speak was part of a wider project of linguistic homogenisation, which, at the same time, also marginalised regional languages such as Basque, Breton, Occitan and Alsatian. Through these vowels, the artist thus evokes a bodily and political memory, inscribed in the faces themselves.

Through a reversal of perspective, the series also serves to reaffirm the richness of sign language: in French Sign Language, facial expression is an essential component of grammar. It does not merely accompany the gesture, but adds meaning, intensity and structure to it. The facial expressions depicted here can therefore be understood not as distortions imposed by spoken language, but as traces of a complex visual language, in which the face becomes a space of expression in its own right, just as decisive as the gestural sign.

From this perspective, the series also offers a shift in perception: it presents the vowel not as a sound, but as an image. Each drawing visually renders a vocalisation, transforming an abstract element of language into a tangible form. The mouth, facial tensions and muscle contractions become the vehicles for a visual language.

The series has its origins in workshops held with Deaf people, members of ARIEDA Occitanie in Montpellier, during which the face was explored as a means of communication. Through photography and then drawing, the participants experimented with amplifying expressions, shaping features to the point of distortion. The drawings resulting from these sessions encapsulate this exploration: the faces appear fragmented, sometimes lacking contours or ears, reduced to a topography of wrinkles, hollows and orifices. Eyes and mouths become zones of transition: between interiority and exteriority, absorption and projection, language and silence.

The title Grotesques refers to the etymology of the term — derived from grotto — denoting the ancient frescoes discovered in underground spaces, populated by hybrid and distorted figures. By extension, the grotesque becomes here a language of the margins, a space of metamorphosis and the subversion of norms. The faces in the series can thus be viewed as ‘mask-faces’, echoing carnival traditions where hierarchies are overturned and bodies become vehicles for a different voice.

Straddling historical constraint and expressive power, Grotesques (A, E, I, O, U, Y) explores the tension between imposed language and acts of resistance, whilst reaffirming the visual and embodied nature of language. Here, the face becomes a site of struggle, memory and transformation, where the voice itself is revealed.