Mots Doux (tender words) is a series of drawings created from photographs of anonymous messages collected in public restrooms.
These inscriptions, often considered ephemeral or insignificant, nevertheless constitute a particular form of expression. The walls of bathrooms become clandestine spaces of communication where fragments of intimacy are deposited: confidences, declarations, questions, thoughts, anger, or simple acts of writing. These messages exist in a paradoxical place, both public and private, where anonymity allows a freedom of expression that might not exist elsewhere.
Public restrooms, traditionally organized according to gender separation, are also spaces where forms of dialogue emerge between people who share the same experience of the place. The inscriptions that appear there reveal an invisible human presence: that of absent individuals whose only remaining trace is their written word.
Through drawing, I choose to move these anonymous voices away from their original context and give them a new temporality. The graphic gesture transforms writing destined to disappear into a lasting image, while preserving its fragile and intimate nature.
Mots Doux thus explores the relationship between presence and absence, between what is revealed and what is concealed, between collective space and personal expression. These fragments of language, abandoned on walls, become sensitive traces of fleeting existences.
Mots Doux, 2026.
Colored pencil,
13,5 x 9 cm c/u,
Colombes, France.
Alongside the original drawings, I created a small accordion-fold publication using photocopies of these drawings. This edition extends the experience of the work through another format, exploring sequence, unfolding, and the relationship between images.
