Exotisme Total

Exotisme Total is based on a sequence taken from an advertisement in which a Total employee, dressed in red, washes a camel as if washing a car at a service station. Several successive moments from the sequence are compressed into a single image through temporal scanning. The scene draws on an imagery of exoticism and adventure associated in particular with the Paris-Dakar Rally, down to a colour palette reminiscent of colonial-era posters. Its comic premise perpetuates a form of humour inherited from colonial imagery, based on caricature, infantilisation, and the distancing of the “native” as an exotic other. The use of these codes by a French oil company also brings into view the continuity between this imagery and the exploitation of resources in former colonies.