Larissa Viaene

Larissa Viaene (born 1990, lives and works in Brussels) is a draughtswoman, performer and visual artist. Abstract and figurative elements appear in her works in equal measure, often in interplay. Simplicity and composition are of particular importance here. Her pared-down drawing lines aim for a double layer through the free connection of colour, movement, form and word. Within an always sober interplay of lines, she creates the necessary emptiness that can bring the viewer to stillness.

Viaene invariably uses humour and alienation in order to question her doubts and herself, to understand and feel herself and her surroundings, but above all to put herself in perspective and not forget. Through the drawing medium, she expresses her experience of and love for human naivety. She prefers to depict man's unconscious in the form of separate, strange creatures. Her depiction forms a process of playfulness and intuition, in search of the indefinable. Viaene tries to put the viewer in an active role, she invites the viewer to step into the work and consequently situate himself. Viaene expects her readers and viewers to complete the image.

As an illustrator, her contributions are not literal visual representations but rather an instinctive, abstract reflection of the text. She has drawn for the magazine Deus Ex machina, De Letterzetter, the poets Astrid Haerens and Siel Verhanneman, among others.