In the room to the right, three blown-glass sculptures inspired by the shapes of ancient lachrymatories stand out against one of these prints. A lachrymatory was a vessel meant to collect the tears of mourners, linking the evaporation of tears to the progression of grief. By filling these vessels with artificial tears, the artist creates a dialogue between truth and the illusion of truth (enlarged real tears and artificial tears), as well as between lived experience and imagined objects valued for their poetic utility.
In the room to the left, a collection of family photographs salvaged from negatives damaged in a flood shows people fading under mold and water damage. The metaphor is striking : these images literally sink into oblivion, swallowed by time, symbolizing the fragile fate of personal history, much like the grim fate of family albums often found at flea markets. As the artist notes, they are “the results of a micro-trauma to the images—personal photographs destroyed—making these prints survivors of an intimate shipwreck. Blurred visions, whether from tears or flowing water, bring memories and events back to the surface of the visible, much like the felt drawings that suggest a never-fully-realized overflow.”
This series of felt drawings, displayed in the back room, is created using colored pencils on wool felt and draws inspiration from images of floods, tsunamis, and torrential rains found in the media or online. The artist enlarges and hand-draws specific details from these images, which inherently carry human suffering (injured, surviving, or deceased individuals), onto a material long valued for its protective, insulating, and fire-resistant properties. “Wool, which shields sheep from harsh weather, parasites, and external threats by granting them immunity to certain climates, acts as the receptacle for these suffering images, transforming them into a healing support for human vulnerability.”
These images veer away from any direct representation, infusing the catastrophe with an abstract dimension and allowing for broad interpretation. The horror recedes; no victims can be identified. Instead, the viewer encounters a dissolution of energy into color. The artist dissolves the forms within the image (by softening lines and blurring contours) and reconnects them differently (through fusion, condensation, and gradation). This process transcends the overwhelming saturation of catastrophic imagery, offering instead a space where the viewer’s eye can breathe. In a sense, Léa Belooussovitch resists the violence of direct representation by reconfiguring one sensibility into another. She introduces elements of ambiguity and concealment into the visible, shifting the explicit into the implicit. She introduces elements of ambiguity and concealment into the visible, shifting the explicit into the implicit. By «unlocking» the closed-off nature of an image steeped in suffering, she neutralizes its pain and reopens the source material, allowing us to see without directly seeing.
