“The Nowhere Plan.” All photographs © Julia Liger-Belair, shared with permission
“The home generally is a image of consolation and refuge from the cruel world. A home, in different phrases, generally is a reflection of every little thing we maintain pricey,” says Toronto-based artist Julie Liger-Belair, whose mixed-media collages typically heart on depictions of house. “However a home may also be a spot of worry, oppression, and powerlessness,” she provides. “I’m actually obsessed by this duality.”
Liger-Belair augments discovered images, historic portraits, botanicals, and patterned papers with a spread of drawing media. Throughout the pandemic, when quarantines enforced boundaries between inside areas and the surface world, she began to think about what it means to do or present one thing “on the within.” This led to incorporating motifs associated to residing areas and enigmatic dwellers. Our bodies merge with structure, botanicals bloom from torsos and limbs, and otherworldly landscapes lengthen into the space.
“Misplaced with the Dolls”
Drawing on an curiosity in desires and surreal worlds, Liger-Belair faucets into the realm of the unfamiliar. Every composition is based on a way of marvel, analyzing what we understand as actuality or fiction. She says:
I believe that people have at all times been drawn to the realm of the implausible, because it’s such a typical theme in books, movies, and art work from many various cultures and instances in historical past. I’d even argue that we are able to perceive science as an try to find or glimpse the implausible hidden or embedded in the true. I’m pondering right here of microscopic views of cells and even images of distant stars. These unusual worlds are tangible and will not be simply to be present in desires.
Liger-Belair gravitates towards the accessibility of collage and the infinite potential to think about, prepare, and recontextualize new narratives. She typically works in sequence, permitting themes to emerge intuitively. “Whereas the general storyline will not be completely apparent in anyone piece, it’s vital to grasp that with each work, I’m telling a narrative to myself,” she says. “In some sense, unfolding that narrative is simply as vital for me—and maybe extra gratifying—than ending particular person items.”
Discover extra on the artist’s web site and Instagram.
“Blue Vase”
“Headdress 2”
“When Two Mountains Meet”
“I Am Winter”
“Headdress 4”
“Typically to the Left”
“Beasts of Burden”
“Headdress 3”
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