Radical Corollas draws the portrait of four women who have experienced limb amputations. Society’s gaze—at the intersection of ableist and patriarchal stereotypes—makes these bodies it doesn’t want to acknowledge invisible—or conversely—fetichizes and pities them. While the collective unconscious considers amputations to belong exclusively to male bodies post war, for these women, they are the result of accidents—in a car, at home, or in the body. I shot these photographs on 35mm colour film and hand process them. I also decided to question the transformation of the accident by stewing my film in film soup—a solution of household liquids—to alter the emulsion and create random colours and textures.
As an extension to my previous work on disability, trauma, chronic pain, Radical Corollas has given me an opportunity to pursue my personal and artistic examination of the intersection of anti-ableism and feminism through a poetic observation of the representation of amputated female bodies. By combining the images of these women to those abstract and luxurious images on which they are based, this project illustrates the intimately political power and posture female amputees embody.
Sarah Seené is a French photographer and filmmaker based in Montreal (Quebec, Canada) who works with analog mediums like 35mm film, Super 8 and Polaroid. Seené taught herself analogue photography at 16 years of age, when she began using a communal dark room near her home. Over a number of years, she has developed an aesthetic rooted in the documentary genre and characterized by a unique sensibility and poetry that addresses intimacy and what it is to be human.
Her photography has been exhibited and projected in several solo and group exhibitions internationally, such as at the Voix-off festival (France), Revela-T (Spain), Présences Photographies (France), Biennale de photographie en Condroz (Belgium) or Atoll artist-run centre (Canada). Her short films have been screened at many international festivals, including the Ann Arbor Film Festival (United States), the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma - FNC (Canada), Sheffield Doc Fest (United Kingdom), Regard (Canada) or DOXA (Canada).
In 2025, her short documentary Orbits won the Canadian Grand Prize and the International FIPRESCI Critic's Award at Regard (Canada). In 2021, her short experimental film Lumen received the Best Experimental Short Film Award at the Festival on the Bayou (United States), the Best Extreme Short Documentary Award at Doc.Berlin Film Festival (Germany) and Second Prize at the International Rare Disease Film Festival (Germany).
Opening:
19.09.2025 | 19:30
Opening hours:
Tuesday–Thurdsay | 10:00–18:00
Friday | 12:00–20:00
Saturday–Sunday | 12:00–17:00
Gallery of Modern Art Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum in Bydgoszcz