Cecile Hoodie
My first name is really Cécile, I’m french, I was born in the south of France, I came from a stepfam-
ily, I’m 34 years old, I have a son, and I’m a nurse in an operating room. “hoodie” is a pseudonym, a
tribute to a friend of mine who called me « Capuche » (Hoodie in French) and who died murdered
4 years ago. I studied literature and visual arts in high school, and before take pics I drew and wrote
a lot. I had a happy childhood, but a troubled adolescence (because I was very bad about myself)
and it made me know a lot of topics that I mentioned in my photos, such as depression, violence,
loneliness, drugs, suicide ... otherwise, I love rock, crime series, thrillers, hoodies, cheese, racoons,
sunsets and dawn.
You use a lot of specific objects in you art-
works how do you find these objects? Do the
objects give you the idea, or do you have the
idea then search for exactly what you need?
I see the objects and the ideas come after, in
90% of the cases, sometimes I think of an idea
and I seek after the objects to realize this idea,
but it’s rare. I find my objects on the internet, or
flea markets, or in everyday life (at work, in my
childhood toys etc.
Do you think that people are slaves to tech-
nology? Are you also a slave to technology?
yes, I think a lot of people are slaves of new
technologies, especially the internet and smart-
phones. We do everything with now (alarm
clock, watch, sport, music, agenda ...). I’m
addicted too. I have had breaks without a phone
following stories of theft or repairs. These breaks
usually lasted a week at most, and even if at the
time I was almost bad, after a few days I thought
it was good for me. A break without a phone
allows you to do other things. But I’m always
happy to find it.
You have a lot of artworks about heartbreak
why is that?
Love and heartbreak are ubiquitous in our lives
and our society. They directly influence our hap-
piness or our distress. I like working on passion-
ate feelings, because in a love disorder a person
can be very different from what she is normally,
and I find it very interesting. Love and heart-
break speak to everyone.
Your artworks are a strange mix of feelings
like hate, love, submission, rejection do you
send messages through your artworks, or it's
just the way you let your feelings out ??
I am very inspired by the emotional troubles in
general and also the passionate relationships
between humans (love, hate, conflict, rupture ...).
I also like to create images about tolerance (against
homophobia, racism, misogyny) but also about
the societary facts that have taken an enormous
place in our lives (internet, sex, food, various
addictions ... ). I get a lot of inspiration from my
personal story (my complicated adolescence, the
tragedies I’ve experienced) to try to talk to people
who might have gone through the same things. So
the answer is both, I try to get messages and at the
same time, these photos are a therapy for me.
How often do you find yourself defending your
artworks?
I have almost no haters. Sometimes people don’t
agree with me and tell me, but it’s often nice, it
opens the debate, and the photos are also made for
that. I met more critics when other pages shared
photos, and that out of context people didn’t
understand them. For example, I made a photo to
denounce the sexual abuse, with panties where the
person wrote in “if you read that, I’m too drunk,
stop and call my friends”, and that’s, of course, to
bring to think about the fact of abuse during par-
ties. But some pages shared it in a funny way, and
many people were shocked and I felt obliged to
answer them but I could hardly make them listen
to reason, and it hurt me, but now I let it flow.
What do you think beauty is?
I think that beauty is a very relative thing, and proper to each person, I also think that the more a person is sensi-
tive and the more she/he will find beauty everywhere. Me, for example, I can find something beautiful in things
that seem innocuous to other people, like rays of light in the dust that flies, or a very common scene between
friends, a flower, etc. Before I thought that hypersensitivity was a burden, but ultimately it may be more a gift.
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