New works by Valérie Belmokhtar

‘Ovid’s mythology and metamorphoses have been recurring themes in my artistic work since 2008. It’s a series that I’m developing, taking liberties with the texts or returning to them more precisely at certain periods. I have a cyclical relationship with this theme.
Mythology has always conditioned our vision of the world through the founding stories from all over the world. I’ve been interested in it since I was a child, through my reading, but also since I did an artistic residency in Greece, travelling around several sites for several months in 1997, as part of my studies at ENSBA (Beaux-Arts de Paris). During this artistic residency I was able to immerse myself in the founding stories of antiquity through works of art, museums and archaeological sites such as Delphi and Athens. I walked around these sites with a sketchbook in my hand. I also travelled to Italy, visiting a number of ancient cities and sites from the same period.

Mythology is part of the collective unconscious and has permeated our human psyche and our relationship with the world. I like to revisit it visually in the context of the links with the living that it suggests. We need to imagine new images and new narratives for our changing world, and this is one of the themes I’m keen to explore in my work.

I’m particularly inspired by the founding texts, which I’ve been drawing on regularly for years to create my work, because they evoke the metamorphosis of being, transformation, impermanence and the links to living things.
The poetic dimension of these foundational texts speaks to me in particular, allowing me to interpret them visually as a natural and spontaneous passage to my own creative process. In my drawings and prints, I seek the poetic and imaginary dimension in osmosis with living things. We are nature, nature is us. I also evoke a relationship with the body and the senses.

I’m looking to tell new myths, new and renewed narratives that link us to our planet by delving into my own mental images.
In the modern world, we’ve lost our link with the stories that connected us to living things. We need to rediscover them, but we also need to reinvent them. We also need to preserve the links between living beings and between human beings, which are sometimes so badly damaged in our modern times.
Valérie Belmokhtar, 2024

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