Christophe Muylaert

This installation revisits the myth of L’Inconnue de la Seine as an early precursor of what Jean Baudrillard later described as the precession of simulacra: the disappearance of the original beneath an endless chain of reproductions.

On the left, a lithophane shows the supposed face of the drowned unknown girl – itself already a reproduction of a questionable death mask. On the right, three 3D-printed masks are generated by AI from increasingly blurred photographs of that image. As each version drifts further away from the source, it paradoxically gains a sense of authenticity, as if a new truth emerges independent of any origin.

Just like the legend of L’Inconnue – with no certainty about who she was, nor whether the mask was ever real – images today circulate as signs without reference. Copies give birth to new copies. The original is no longer a starting point, but a rumour.

The work reveals how images not only survive but grow stronger as they detach from their source. The simulacrum replaces the real – and we barely notice the loss.