Feelings

Drawing on the borders of abstraction: this publication presents Léa Belooussovitch's singular approach to drawing through a selection of freehand works using coloured pencil on white textile felt.

Léa Belooussovitch's drawings use the same technique. She begins by selecting those images from the press or the internet that assail us daily, illustrating dramatic news events such as attacks in Pakistan, wartorn scenes from Syria, etc. The artist focuses representing anonymous victims who are injured or vulnerable. Léa Belooussovitch subjects these source images to various manipulations (cropping, enlargement) before transferring them to the felt.

The shapes that emerge are coloured halos that blur the onlooker's recognition of the scene. As it passes from pixel to pigment, the sharpness of the initial image is thus transformed into a blurred drawing that seems to contain and attenuate the pain of what is represented under the surface. By blurring reference points and distancing the viewer from the violence, Léa Belooussovitch questions our relationship to information and voyeurism, while stimulating our imagination.
Published to celebrate Léa Belooussovitch's exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Saint-Étienne, France, from 1 April to 15 August 2021.
Born in 1989 in Paris, Léa Belooussovitch lives and works in Brussels.