musical visit of the exhibitions space oddity and bad timing

Born in New York in 1947, Ken Grimes grew up in Cheshire, Connecticut. When he was in his twenties, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was forced to abandon his university studies. At the end of the Vietnam War, his father, who headed an arms manufacturing company, sold his business and built a tennis center, which would become a central theme in his son’s drawings. “I think my father felt somewhat responsible for my illness, so in a way, he wanted to be involved,” Grimes explained.

Who is Tom Wilkins? That is the question Sébastien Girard has been trying to answer since 2011 when he acquired 900 enigmatic Polaroids, which were later published in 2017 under the title My TV Girls. This series of television captures, ranging from 1978 to 1982, consistently features women and concludes with the only self-portrait in the series where Tom Wilkins portrays himself as a woman. Found in an house in Boston, United States, the acquisition of this extensive photographic series gave rise to the almost detective-like investigation that Sébastien Girard pursued for nearly 12 years in order to unravel the mystery of Tom Wilkins.