THE DRAWINGS INCOGNITOS

Incognito is a series of black China ink in 50x50 cm which began in the summer of 2006. Incognito comes from Italian and Latin incognitus (unknown). It is the situation of a person who does not want to be recognized or who wishes to conceal his/her identity. Travelling incognito, keeping incognito, as remaining anonymous. This refers to a person who exists among the others without getting known : a personae (a mask allowing to see through). A paradox, a hiding place.

Preys and predators
Between mimesis, as the art of remaining unacknowledged, and mimesis as a usurped identity, a living being can resort to various strategies of survival in an existence where it is both prey and predator. The animal gives the signal, the sign, the mask. The person protects him/herself, conceals himself/herself, metamorphoses.
- being noticed, or vanishing in the background ?
- Exhibiting oneself / concealing oneself ? Showing oneself/ making oneself invisible ?

Monster/ difference/ resemblance /norm / logotype
- Offensive or defensive attitude?
Drawings are passive or aggressive signs. They are the weapons of the predator or the prey, but concealed or disguised. War postures or mimics appear when danger occurs (the jockey, the lion or even the panda). The jockey is a competitor among others. He has got sharp teeth. We do not know who he really is, maybe a skull ? But we still bet on him. An amazing threat suddenly appears from apparently peaceful beings then.
-Intimidations, mimicry of the frightening, cunning, deceit… are as many stratagems of dissuasion. Magic is not far. Drawings are ex votos, drawn from the wish, bluffs, tattoos, shamanic signs to ward off fear.

Abstract
The drawing of the city of dice is also called the 2D city (the title in French is a pun between “de dés” and “2D”), for even if it represents 3D, it remains a 2D image, made of dice. It is a way of representing the city of chance, where the die is not cast yet, where everything remains possible, according to the throwing of the dice on the surfaces of buildings. By analogy , the title masks the drawing, and the drawing masks the ridges of the 3D volumes. The white spots are out of the game, out of the city. In the series of the Incognitos the "Ni vus ni connus" (“Neither seen nor known”, without anybody noticing) where the part of the unknown is great, the “m’as-tu vu” (“have you seen me”, a French phrase meaning “show-offs”), play an important part for they proudly display their masks.

If the figure is present, it does not figure a specific identity, but it “identifies” with a drawing, it takes another’s identity. The figures only represents its concept. It does not illustrate an idea, it is the idea. The social camouflage is concealed in the uniform. In the plain shape of the standardization of society, multiple hybrid identities are concealed and created. This social camouflage offers keys, codes to endlessly code and decode.

We live a daily hunt where prey and predator play in turn. The art of knowing how to keep one’s secrets in a more and more transparent society, where traceability overcomes, is a matter of survival. Drawing subterfuges, markers of asociality, tattoeing in black a white page, is a way of representing this art of secrecy.

These drawings are a form of asceticism. They have taken the time of being long pondered while their realization only lasts for a few minutes, without hesitation. They do not turn back. There is on the one hand the pleasure of marking ideas in black, and on the other hand the materialization of signs, traces, passages in the virtual and its hybrid identity components. A quest, as a watch over the mutations of our states.

Sonia Marques – 2006-2009 (English translation : Thank you Florence for your help ;.)