Fracture
A face, seen head-on. The framing is tight, the gaze direct, almost motionless. The mouth is closed, tense. But this face is not intact. It is split, crossed by a vertical tear that divides the image in two. The skin appears altered. It is covered with an organic, rough material: cactus, almost hostile.
Enki Bilal is a draughtsman and painter. In his work, bodies and faces bear the marks of history and memory. His characters inhabit futuristic, dystopian worlds shaped by authoritarian regimes and the legacy of communism.
This is not simply a portrait of the artist. The fissure is not decorative. It tells how the fractures of war enter the face and alter it. The surface bears traces of what exceeds the individual: the scars of history and the projections of a future that is too frightening.
The portrait is inhabited, unsettling, almost biomechanical. It shows a man as he appears through the world he inhabits.

Fracture
You see a face. It is cut in two by a long line running through it. On the skin, you see a cactus, with spikes made to protect.
This face is not broken. It is marked. A bit like a scar, when you fall and hurt yourself. Difficult things do not stay only outside. They enter us. They change us. They change our face without breaking us.
Here, you understand that we are not made of a single piece. Sometimes, what happens in the world leaves marks on us.