Graduated in Plastic Arts at Sainte-Marie (Brussels) and at the Ixelles School of Arts, drawing is for me a physical, psychological and social need.
It comes from my personal history, my experience, my education. Through my drawings, I want to influence our gender conditions, our lives, our rights.
For exercise, to relax, and to find inspiration, I sketch people in motion, in the park, in the metro, on the terrace of a café. I take portraits of friends, family... But in fact, I pursue a feminist approach. My desire is to show the woman, free in and with her body, in her mind, her movements. Free to pose, think, do, practice the sport she wants, dress as she wants.
In my drawings, my models reveal themselves, confident, relaxed, their clothing, their position and their attitude are just as much, they take their place in the space, the one for which they must fight, again and again. The “female gaze”, used in feminist circles at the beginning of the 20th century, and later on social networks, appears in reaction to the famous “male gaze”. This “female gaze”, I give it its full meaning in my series “The Feminine Vibe”. In my future projects, women will always be in the spotlight. I want to exploit the theme of women facing a still very patriarchal society, facing cultural, economic, institutional violence, facing advertising, their relationship to the body and the passing of time, facing climate change.
What interests me is what happens in the head and body of a woman. Her relationship with others, with men, with the world, with her physique, with her age, with public space, alone, with her family, with her friends, at work. I want to highlight women freed from all these constraints, women who look you straight in the eye and tell you: “I have the right to be the woman I am, with the physique I have, the age I am, the clothes I wear, the place I want to be, the activity I do, who I spend time with...
Today we are still bearing the weight of the male gaze and judgment, and must still fight against inequalities on a personal, social, family, marital, professional level, even in Belgium!
My drawings are therefore my way of denouncing and contesting all that.
Discover my work: https://daphnedrawings.be/