Zoe Chait's 'What Dream' Is An Exploration Of Grief and Loss @ Micki Meng In Paris

 

Zoe Chait
cheeky, 2019
Archival pigment print
23 x 17 x 1 1/2 inches
Edition 1 of 3 + 2AP

 

Grief is unpredictable. It doesn’t follow a pattern, but it often brings us back to the same memories, searching for answers or comfort. We turn to photos, notes, and objects, trying to find meaning in them. Over time, both our perspective and the materials change.

Zoe Chait’s exhibition, What dream, revisits images first shown at Ramiken, New York, in 2021. These thirteen works document Chait’s relationship with music producer Sophie, capturing moments from 2017 to 2020 as Sophie transitioned from a private individual to the public figure SOPHIE. While the photos are intimate, they also highlight a sense of distance—the gap between personal connection and public persona. Chait’s work reflects an effort to reconcile the Sophie she knew with the one the world saw.

Sophie died in an accidental fall on January 30, 2021, six months before the exhibition opened. Nearly four years later, Chait revisited these images, altering them in response to her grief. She worked with printed positives and negatives, abstracting the images to explore themes of presence and absence. Sophie’s influence—her rituals, worldview, and music’s distinctive texture—continues to shape these works, which remain both unfinished and complete.

In Mexico City, Chait collaborated with a master printer of photogravure, a 19th-century printing process using etched copper plates and a gelatin resist. Chait was drawn to the unetched plates, mid-process, where the gelatin resist formed ghostly images on the copper. What dream features two pairs of such works, each showing a positive and negative version of the same image. The exhibition’s title comes from the first, a still from a video shoot where Sophie appears poised under dramatic lighting. The second image shows Sophie lying nude on a bed, open and serene. These works are material and painterly, presenting images that feel incomplete and vulnerable to time.

Chait also reimagined her video installation, projection reflected (2017–2020). Projected onto aluminum panels with varied grain alignments, the videos capture intimate moments between the artist, Sophie, and the camera. One video shows Sophie adjusting her hair before a shoot, focusing on her public image. Another captures Chait gently moving Sophie’s chin in soft afternoon light. Ambient sounds—breathing, pauses, background noise—create a sense of continuity. The videos loop at different lengths, offering endless opportunities to revisit and reinterpret these moments.

What dream is on view through February 20 by appointment only @ Micki Meng 2 Rue Beaubourg Paris 4e

Read Our Interview Of Zoe Chait And See Her Solo Exhibition Honoring The Late Sophie

Zoe Chait projection reflected, 2017-2020 Projections on aluminum panels 9:18

Zoe Chait
projection reflected, 2017-2020
Projections on aluminum panels
9:18

Capturing Sophie, the late, hyperkinetic pop sensation whose tragic and untimely death shocked and saddened millions around the globe, is like photographing the flight of a butterfly. The prodigious and pioneering musician and producer of avant garde electronic music began her career anonymously making cosmic waves with singles like “Bigg” (2013) and “Lemonade” (2014), worked closely with a number of artists from the notorious PC Music label, and in 2017 came out as a trans woman. Developing an intimate connection with Sophie at such an inflection point was the genesis of Zoe Chait’s Noise, a solo exhibition of portraits that capture an individual who has just emerged from the cocoon with a new and fleeting lease on life. Here and gone in a flash, two artists forge a bond under painfully short exposure. A loving elegy, besotted with adoration. Chait bears witness to the weight of the sublime and the value of the present moment. Read more.

Cecile Believe Releases New EP "Made In Heaven" With Photographs by Zoe Chait

“We might be tangled in our thoughts, fractured and fragmented, constricted by channels...but if we follow one of the threads for long enough we eventually touch something and connect,” is how artist Zoe Chait describes the concept for these photos made on the occasion of Cecile Believe’s new EP “Made In Heaven,” available to stream here. “Made in Heaven” is her first release since working with Sophie on her Grammy nominated album. photographs by Zoe Chait