VERSAILLES
A project lasting more than twenty-five years, Versailles: Transitional States documents the transformation of the Royal Palace from the symbol and heart of Ancien Régime France to a monument of modern museification. Polidori's images reveal the ambiguity implicit in every restoration project: What happens to a room or a structure when the old is made new? Versailles crystallises a very contemporary nostalgic complex. An 18th-century palace restored by a modern society trying to imagine itself as it once was, it is a visual citation between past and present, a powerful reminder of history and modernity within the confines of a single frame. For Polidori, rooms play the role of 'theatres of memory' and receptacles of meaning. The paintings, sculptures and decorative elements that adorn the palace's crumbling walls are symbols of historical displacement, protagonists of the perpetual re-enactment of a simulated past.
