Organic Composition XXV Artwork

analog collage on acid free black board, black framed After moving to the US, Axelle started wandering around at the flea markets and collecting old illustration medical books mainly, and she ended up collecting all kinds of books, vintage photos and small treasures. It has been a way for her to be connected to her new country and home through new imagery. Small ephemera and old papers speak a lot and they speak loudly to her. Moving to another country surely did shape her creativity. She started experimenting with these papers and photos. Axelle process became an appropriation of these objects by cutting, covering, hiding, (re)assembling in the manner of a palimpsest. The collages evolve and change depending on the material found and available. Selecting an image, cutting a piece of paper and using paper cuts to create another image with a different meaning is a way to be in touch with the world around her. Collaging opens a new perspective of her identity by simultaneously confronting collective memories and individual consciousness. It has been a dialogue with Axelle uncertainty and ultimately her connection with the outside world. For a long time, her collages featured more figurative with anatomical elements. Yet as she was working on those collages, she started to look at the discarded elements from my cuts, scattered across the table and floor. In those remaining shapes and colors became inadvertent arrangements and harmonious patterns. Axelle became an observer. She began to see their potential as organic compositions in their own right, as interesting as the deliberately constructed interplays she had done before. She found herself shying away from the figurative elements to focus essentially on abstract compositions. Using cuts from body parts to create grotesque hybrids seems to aim to a new world concealing art, science and poetry.