When words no longer suffice to express pain, and medicine withdraws upon reaching its limits, can painting take over as a communicative medium? Art might give shape to the unspeakable, making the invisible visible. Artistic creation rooted in suffering, often arising from it, provides therapeutic or at least cathartic relief, while opening a critical reflection on the human condition. Illness is a maze of uncertainty. Representing illness—and especially representing one's own illness—could it not be a means to manage this uncertainty?

Ludovic Fleury places the body at the center of his constantly evolving artistic process. Demonstrating complete autonomy and remarkable mastery of his craft, Fleury creates everything himself: stretchers, canvases, artisanal primers, even preparing his own pigments. For Trouble de la chair, Ludovic Fleury produced a new series of oil paintings informed by four years of research into chronic illness, meticulously exploring the body and its representation. Striking a perfect balance between brutality and poetry, Fleury transforms physiological elements into pictorial motifs.

Among the research interests central to Fleury’s practice is the phenomenology of illness. In philosophy, phenomenology centers experience above all else. In medical terms, it defines chronic illness not merely as a medical condition, but as a lived experience. This perspective on illness reveals how bodies interact with their environment, their identity, and surrounding power structures.

The chronically ill individual constantly navigates between self and world. Fleury’s installation L’autre contrée depicts these liminal, ambiguous spaces—psychological or physical—using medical gauze, known for its stretchable and translucent qualities. The motif of the curtain symbolizes the boundary between states of health and illness within medical spaces. Phenomenology precisely softens this boundary between self and other, patient and caregiver, by emphasizing lived experience. The longstanding medical tradition of dismissing patients' voices, long criticized by activist doctors like France’s Martin Winckler, could finally be undermined.

Fleury captures this intimate, indescribable bodily experience through sensuous textural work that blends flat expanses, drips, and washes. The resulting interplay of light evokes the stretched, cyclical perception of time intrinsic to the experience of illness: his canvases conjure blurred, indeterminate space-times, potentially timeless for anyone. Sometimes within a single canvas, or even a single body, diluted paint areas allow light to emerge from beneath, juxtaposed with areas that are more opaque, troubled, or dark. Ludovic Fleury thus creates artworks that can be challenging to interpret. Borders blur more than ever between visible and invisible, control and chaos, echoing how illness confounds distinctions between comfort and discomfort.

The phenomenology of illness anchors experience in the present and gestures toward the future, opening possibilities to appreciate life, to taste experiences beyond illness’s discontinuous space-time of loss. Perhaps this explains the seemingly contradictory lightness found in part of Fleury's work: some paintings stand out through their luminosity and clarity. In Aponia, the subject’s face—far less distorted than in other portraits—appears serene, an impression reinforced by the work’s title. Likewise, the body is notably transparent—during illness, it was more opaque. Yet, this levity remains ambiguous: if not explicitly intended by the artist, the setting—this time a natural rather than medical space—can evoke either relief or burial. Could the protagonist be peacefully freed from pain forever?

This constant double-reading, along with the figures’ discomfort portrayed by Ludovic Fleury, may unsettle viewers confronted by scenes we normally prefer to avoid. Ultimately, perhaps it is our own able-bodied perceptions and cultural norms that need questioning. Couldn't we imagine the protagonist of Cry of the Flesh rising rather than succumbing to pain? This is not about denying chronic sufferers’ profound pain, but rather highlighting painting as the artist’s pathway to self-discovery. A beautiful tribute to the body’s remarkable capacity.

— Balqis Tandjaoui