Marie-Isabelle Callier

After a Degree in Illustration at St-Luc in Brussels in 1991, Marie-Isabelle Callier worked for 12 years as graphic designer and advertising illustrator. Her paintings have been exhibited in Brussels, Luxembourg (Galerie Simoncini), Washington, Shanghai, Singapore and Paris. Since 2018, her screens have been exhibited at the Biennale of De Mains De Maîtres. She lives and works in Luxembourg. In addition to her artist pursuits, she has likewise written and illustrated several children’s books.

Indigo watercolour and medium on Japanese paper waxed with encaustic wax. The waxed and then ironed paper acquires a velvety texture, sometimes opaque, sometimes semi-transparent depending on the light. The ink beads and breathes, creating dark densities or, conversely, volatile materials. Depending on the light, the transparencies reveal a certain blurriness, the presence of light, diaphanous shadows or other hidden corners in the cut-out papers.

Marie-Isabelle lets herself be carried away by the invitation to travel suggested by the theme, and finds herself on the edge of imaginary and hereditary territories. Following the Portugal of the Great Discoveries, a land of welcome and crossbreeding, eager to discover new worlds. Not as conquerors, but as botanists curious about new species, the richness of the world and its biodiversity. In these lands, visited long ago, she rediscovers her distant roots.