‘Dominique is France’s most common mixed-gender and 27th most popular fi rst name; Lambert also ranks 27th amongst family names. I therefore defined the 191 Dominique Lamberts listed in France’s White Pages as my study population. After gathering various analyses about the characteristics of the first name Dominique, I sent each Dominique Lambert a letter asking him or her to take a personality test and fill out a Chinese portrait (a series of quick questions and answers). Using that as a starting point, with help from the Consultative Committee for the Description of Dominique Lamberts, including a psychologist, statistician, police inspector and legal expert, I wrote a portrait of the Dominique Lamberts who replied. The painter Benoît Bonnemaison-Fitte used this text as the basis for drawing a portrait, which Dominique Ledée, a police investigator from the Paris Police Prefecture, turned into a composite sketch. Then, I looked for a model bearing a strong resemblance to the composite sketch to photograph him or her. A sealed envelope containing the ID picture of the Dominique Lambert who completed the Chinese portrait closed the chain of representations.’

Stéphanie Solinas uses various official techniques of representing identity, she consults with experts, works her way through successive stages to search and exhaust the system and tools of representation itself.

The Carré d’Art show marks the first time all the faces of this sample of individuals have ever been exhibited, offering viewers the possibility of travelling through the worlds of Dominique Lambert, sensing the distance between the clichés of representation and the irreducibility of singularity.