La Cage et la larme du peintre 2019

Sandra Chevrier made this powerful piece, La Cage et la larme du peintre, with mixed media, juxtaposing painted portraiture with comic book imagery. The way she tears and layers those comic fragments over the face is a kind of beautiful violence, isn’t it? I am really drawn to the push and pull between the smooth, almost classical rendering of the skin and the rough edges of the comic panels. The colors, too, play a part; that pop-art brightness against the softer tones of the face. Look at how one of the eyes is obscured but the other is not. It's a small detail, but it shifts the whole emotional landscape. It makes me think of how we construct our identities from fragments, from the stories we tell ourselves and the images we consume, how those things both reveal and conceal who we are. Chevrier reminds me a bit of artists like Wangechi Mutu, who also use collage to explore themes of identity and representation. Ultimately, this work is a reminder that art can hold multiple truths, inviting us to see the world in new and unexpected ways.