Opéra-savon, épisode 1 : L’ Aquarium-Museum

Opéra-savon draws its inspiration from the history of soap operas and from hybrid chimeric figures such as the mermaid.

These radio and television shows, originally sponsored by cleaning product manufacturers, emerged in the 1930s, producing narratives that confined femininity to domestic and emotional life. Over time, our society, and particularly women, reclaimed the genre as a critical tool. Opéra-savon echoes this subversion, staging soap protagonists and sculptures with fluid identities that are part animal, plant and myth. At the border of land and sea, life and death, they sing their buried and secret emotions. Opéra-savon develops a sensual, interspecies narrative exploring the body’s potential for transformation and permeability, and the hidden stories that bodies carry. This first episode delves into natural history museum collections and the organic motifs of Art Nouveau objects, which emerged alongside the colonial venture.

“In this first episode, taking place in Liège, the protagonists are born from a metamorphosis of the furniture and collections of the Aquarium-Museum. Their soapy bodies have absorbed chandeliers, seashells, coral and marine invertebrates from the museum. In this liquid and sensual universe, they gently illuminate the window they inhabit and the visitors who encounter them. They get bored of being trapped behind these walls, longing for their shores, rocks and open waters. In their absence, they form a new kind of ecosystem, a microcosm shaped by the transformation of anatomical wax figures, glass models, Art Nouveau lamps and collected organic elements.”