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Mermaids, Pigs and Ballerinas

In 2022, few months after giving birth, I started painting with watercolours of appropriated Disney and pornographic images. During this postpartum period I wanted to draw and paint quickly and immediately due to the lack of time but also because I was looking for dense moments of creativity. I started drawing from pornographic archives I had accumulated in my studio in watercolors. I noticed how I found watercolors an intriguing material: for me it echos propriety and tameness, a historical and girl-phobic prejudice. From this work on, watercolors has become a material territory where the conflict of the ‘pure’ or ‘gracious’ and the ‘wild’ (as it has traditionally underlined the representation of women), is present.

The figure of the pig takes on different roles, from dirt to tenderness to god-likeness, and comes from my childhood when I was punished once for uttering the word ‘pig’ and was left wondering what is wrong with the word. This state of unknowingness as a state of carefreeness that results in punishment, drives my work throughout my practice and through this series I wanted to give it an omnipresent shape.