A CONVERSATION: XÉNIA LUCIE LAFFELY

Xénia Lucie Laffely

Puzzled at Kunstraum Niederösterreich, 2021

One of the first things I noticed, when reading through your artist statement, was the amount of degrees you completed. You hold a BFA and a MFA in Fashion Design from the Haute Ecole d’Art et de design de Genève (Switzerland), a bachelor degree in French literature and art history from the University of Lausanne as well as a certificate in feminist studies from UQAM. What is it about studying that keeps you coming back and how do you feel these subjects culminate in your practice?

It is funny that you mention this. I do love to study, but my academic career was not determined in advance but rather has been driven by spontaneous and intuitive choices. I was always very happy at the end of a course but 2 years later, I wanted to go back and do something else. I am sincerely thirsty for more knowledge, in a theoretical sense but also in terms of exploring different ways of making. 

I am a very curious person and I’m always questioning myself and everything around me, so it is essential for me to keep learning and to expand my views. I was never fully satisfied by my studies, I always wanted to learn more to “fill the blanks”. This need pushed me to look for other input and also to create a specific and personal path. However I do see a continuous thread in terms of the types of studies I completed.

My studies are very important for my practice, as they nourish it constantly. I use the idea of “patchwork”, both as a visual technique but also in a more symbolic or theoretical way. I like the idea of creating specific associations and mixing things that don’t belong together. In my practice, I use a lot of the references that I gathered during my studies, in term of art history, fashion, design, feminist and gender studies. It’s all sewn up together to create a singular point of view. 

I am still thinking about completing more studies. I would love to learn some new technical crafts like upholstery for example. 

Your practice situates itself somewhere between the digital and the very much physical space. How did this intersection of mediums and ways of creating come to be ? 

I think that once again it is linked to me being full of doubts and insatisfactions. During my art history studies, I was constantly drawing. When I started my fashion degree, I started using the computer way more. I just love how they complement each other. I love the efficiency and the immateriality of the digital and the fact that you can go back and forth without any consequences. However I find it stressful to think that these computer drawings won’t age. They will be the same in 10 years, you can reproduce them in an identical way and they can almost disappear without leaving anything behind. So it becomes necessary for me to inject materiality and make them palpable, “real” and unique.  

I usually draw on my computer, in bed and I love to be able to do that. I end up with a lot of drawings and several options for each of them. It’s abundant and I don’t really have to make any choices. Then, when I start the textile work, it becomes concrete, physical and it’s all about making choices. 

Further, it is also important to me to modernize textile works and I enjoy being able to mix a very slick photoshopped aesthetic with the crafty dimension of textile. I think they work well together and bring something more complex than using only one or the other.  

Xénia Lucie Laffely

Stealing their childhood memories

Your more recent works, to me, challenge so many different aspects of the notion of painting. The materials you chose, the sculpturality of the finished works and that no paint or paint brush touches the surface is so intriguing because many of them are hung on walls, like a traditional painting. Do you consider them paintings or how do you define them? 

Until now, I always considered my pieces as textile pieces which include a digital painting process but this question is making me rethink it. I like the idea of using the word painting for my piece in a troubled, unorthodox way. It’s painting but without the decorum of the painter : I use a photoshop brush, not a physical one, the gesture is not totally the same but similar (it’s more “fingery” maybe), I “paint” lying in my bed, without getting dirty, I also use a type of painting gesture when I sew but again it’s not the typical way of painting. 

Another very interesting difference is that my pieces are soft and not hard!
I thought a lot about the ‘status’ of my pieces and how to show them. Some of my early quilts were shown and sold as, at least partially, quilts. I liked the idea of suggesting a physical interaction between the piece and the human and creating pieces for the home, that you could touch and feel. I am still interested in this, but now I am more into the idea of teasing the audience and making them question their desire to touch the piece but not feeling allowed because it is on the wall. I find it fascinating how, in galleries and museums, we learned that some mediums are touchable and others aren’t. 

Your practice intertwines art, design and craftsmanship and you have previously spoken about the hierarchical structures these terms live in. How did you become aware of the hierarchy and why is it important to you to challenge or question them? 

At first, it was simply an interesting subject during my studies. In art history, we studied some artists who would try to make those hierarchies obsolete and question the difference between art and design for example. Soon enough I realised that those hierarchies were still very real. I don’t think I ever studied a textile artist during my bachelor in art history for example. I think those questions appealed to me because I realised that they were also, not only, related to a gender issue and also an ethnocentrist issue. It was very obvious for textile, the way this medium was considered less “legit” because it belonged to a more domestic and “feminine” space and to community crafts. 

It became a part of my own practice later on, when I’d been faced with these hierarchies myself. Whilst applying for grants or awards, I heard very often that my pieces were too “arty” for design or too “design” for art and too crafty for both ahah. So I started seeing this ‘inbetween’ as a part of my practice and to play with those borders that I find often completely obsolete. But at the same time, I am very aware that I too have those biais because I’ve been trained like this.

Xénia Lucie Laffely

Indoor Activities

Within your work we meet various figures, many of them seemingly very confident, staring at the viewer. Who are they and how do you wish for them to interact, if at all, with the audience? 

The figures I deal with in my work are the result of yet another patchwork. I usually mix “stolen” inspirational images from the internet and art history that inspire me such as lesbians of tiktok, movie screenshots, classical paintings, fashion editorial, stories of my friends etc. and pictures I take myself, which are usually self-portraits or portraits of my partner, our dog, my friends and family, my objects. So I always start from existing images that I hybrid together and repaint. It is connected to the idea of autofiction. I use reality to imagine fantasies and I integrate things like instagram filters to help me achieve that. 

I was, and still am to a certain point, a very dreamy person who could take hours imagining stories and my drawings work the same way. 

Even though I have tried a lot of different things, I always go back to close up portraits. I am obsessed with faces and I love the stillness of them. There’s a painting I truly love and is very inspirational to me, the self portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola. She’s looking at us, right in the eyes and in the background she is interrupted whilst painting a painting.I love this confrontation between the painted character and the viewer, it’s very sentimental, emotional and it questions the reality of our feelings towards still objects. It also makes me think about the serotonin that your brain is creating when you’re looking into the eyes of a dog. Maybe that's the type of interaction I want between my pieces and the audience, but with a touch of spookiness.

The almost grotesque and in moments disturbing quality of your image making is really exciting to me especially in contrast with the sensual, shiny, almost sexy fabrics like the velvet and silky ones. Do you feel like there is a balancing act between the hardness of the image and the softness of the material and if so what do these two aspects mean to you ? 

I work with several fabrics, mostly velvet, lycra and satin. I choose them according to their shine, softness and sometimes their elasticity. Each of the fabrics has a specific function. At times I work with sheer fabric to re-create images through transparency and mimic the layering process in photoshop. 

The balance between softness and something more dark is definitely a big part of my practice. I wouldn’t say that the material is only soft and the image is only dark though, I think this ambivalence is present at every part of the process. Finding this balance is part of the spontaneity of my practice, I never really have anything planned in advance, I just go with the flow of what I am drawn to at a specific moment. But I realise that this feeling of uneasy, awkwardness whilst being sensual is very important to me and I believe this hesitation is part of the doubts that are inherent to my work. I consider my pieces to be haunted in a way, full of ghosts, regrets and questions. 

And it’s true that the softness of the material is working as a soothing element. This dimension has always been essential. As I said earlier, I want the viewer to feel physically connected to the piece. I want to create a type of desire, a sensual one between the viewer and the piece. So it is always indispensable to me that the pieces need to be soft, to be inviting and comforting. The first quilts I made were all about comfort, I liked the idea that someone could sleep against or with them and feel comforted. At the same time, the making of the textile part is also the most aggressive part of the process, threads running through the image and the fabric a thousand times, there is something dark and uneasy about that.

From left to right:

Xénia Lucie Laffely,

I’m trying to reach you with my tongue

From beneath you it devours

Do you remember a moment or perhaps a time period where you came to the decision of dedicating your life to being an artist/ creative ?

I think there were a lot of little steps involved, as you can tell from my accumulation of degrees and the development of my practice. I knew at a quite young age that I wanted to work within a creative world but I wasn’t sure how nor if I was capable of it. When I got back from New York after an internship at a fashion house, I took a studio spot for the first time and it had a big impact on me. Having a space dedicated to my own practice, “A Room of One's Own” (Virginia Woolf) made a big difference to me. It helped me feel legitimate and serious about my practice and made me wanna push harder and go further. When I moved to Montréal, I focused on my certificate for a year and then got a studio space and again it solidified that I wanted to pursue a career as an artist more seriously. So yes, I think I connect this decision with the moment I decided to devote a physical space for this work, my practice. 

What is coming up for you next ? 

I am now in Europe for 3 more weeks and I am beyond excited. I was in Vienna for a duo show with the Austrian artist Suzanna Flock at the Kunstraum Niederoesterreich, curated by Katharina Brandl. Then I opened a solo show in Lausanne (Valentin 61), Switzerland. At my return in Canada, I will show some pieces in a group show in a very exciting new Gallery in Toronto called Mayten’s. I collaborated with Margot Klingender, a wonderful canadian artist who works with metal. 

In September, I’ll be part of a very exciting VR project in Rotterdam with the research studio HIPS. At the end of september, I’ll have a solo show with new pieces in Nyon (Switzerland) at Espace d’art Eeeeh!, and some group shows in France and Italy. 

I am also really looking forward to a residency and a solo show in Saint John’s in New Foundland, at a gallery called Eastern Edge ! It was supposed to happen now but it has been pushed back.

Xénia Lucie Laffely

Cuperose

For more information on Xénias practice visit her website or her instagram @xenialucielaffely