Deborah de Robertis rehabilitates Marilyn Monroe in a powerful photographic series

To mark the centenary of Marilyn Monroe's birth, celebrated by a major retrospective at the Cinémathèque française, the Franco-Luxembourgish artist Deborah de Robertis unveils a powerful new photographic series. True to her feminist commitment, she revisits the image of the Hollywood icon to highlight the violence, humiliation, and mechanisms of domination that marked her life, far beyond the glamorous myth.

Inspired by the world of Cindy Sherman, Deborah de Robertis portrays herself as Marilyn Monroe. The star's familiar face reveals a battered body, bruises, blood, and wounds that crack the perfect image constructed by Hollywood. Through these photographs, the artist seeks to unveil the reality hidden behind the icon, restoring the full complexity of a woman too often reduced to her appearance.

A feminist reinterpretation of the Marilyn myth

This series continues the work Deborah de Robertis has been conducting for several years on the portrayal of women in art history and the media. By also discussing Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, Courtney Love, Lindsay Lohan, Amber Heard, Zahia Dehar, and Loana Petrucciani, she draws a parallel between several generations of women whose image has been shaped, exploited, and sometimes destroyed by an industry fascinated by their vulnerability.

For the artist, Marilyn Monroe was neither a naive woman nor a mere sex symbol. She points out that the actress wrote extensively and that her writings reveal a free spirit, far removed from the fantasies that have fueled her legend. Deborah de Robertis thus intends to place the woman behind the character, giving new visibility to her intelligence, her sensitivity, and her story.

A work that gives women a voice again

One of the photographs shows an inflatable doll abandoned on the ground, a powerful image symbolizing how some women have been transformed into consumer objects. In this staging, Deborah de Robertis reverses the perspectives: the doll no longer represents Marilyn Monroe, but those who constructed and consumed her image. By offering this reinterpretation, the artist intends to pay tribute to a woman whose memory often remains trapped in clichés.

With this new photographic series, Deborah de Robertis continues her work of deconstructing female representations. Her perspective offers a profoundly political reading of Marilyn Monroe, inviting the public to move beyond the Hollywood myth and discover a complex, free woman long confined to an image that was not her own.