Name/Title
Shila the GreatEntry/Object ID
2014.10.01Description
Cedric Houin is a photographic artist born in Paris, France in 1978. He grew up traveling as his father worked internationally as a hotelier across Africa, South America, and the Pacific. He later led his own expeditions across the Alps, Ecuador, India, Patagonia, Indonesia, and North America.
Houin's practice is informed by a deep fascination with the diversity of people, cultures, and environments he has experienced. After graduating from a business school in Grenoble, France he moved to Montreal and opened an artist studio under the name Varial.
Houin treats his subjects with great respect in order to capture real and intimate moments. His portraits are striking and evocative, capturing the dignity, beauty, and struggles of the cultures and people in his images. The images serve to make his viewers aware of the many worlds, cultures, and traditions that exist. Houin frequently travels to remote places, obsessed with untold realities, rarely captured moments, and finding the sublime in simple moments.
Shila the Great is a portrait of Shila, a young girl living with her family in the remote mountains of the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan. She is captured sitting, with dark, rich tones and soft lighting that channel the style of renaissance oil paintings. Houin gives the little girl a sense of grandeur traditionally reserved for the wealthy. However, there are subtle hints of realism. The dirt on her face reveals that Shila doesn't come from wealth and that she is a child who plays in the remote countryside. The artist offers a different view of Afghanistan to the one so regularly portrayed in Western media – one that's beautiful, innocent and hopeful.
https://www.varialstudio.com/Artwork Details
Medium
inkjet print mounted on aluminumMade/Created
Artist
Houin, Varial CédricDate made
2011Edition
ed. 2/3Dimensions
Height
121.9 cmWidth
121.9 cm