Circé’s Elusive Bodies

Circé’s work places the female body in the forefront. The bodies are stiff, tense, languid, dancing, incandescent, sometimes spectral; alone or in a multitude; isolated or facing their environment. What they all have in common, however, is a great fluidity of form that evolves from the figurative to the symbolic, sometimes having a markedly female physique but other times appearing more ambiguous.

‘I see the body as being a little like an envelope, it’s what can be seen, what I can represent’, Circé explains. ‘Often in my work, the body disappears and you end up understanding that it isn’t necessarily that of a woman, it could be that of a man.’

Valentine ‘Circé’ Arino has been drawing since she was a young child and has taken a particular interest in women’s bodies since her teenage years. After studying economics and beginning a career in finance, she embraced her passion for art and exhibited her work for the first time in 2021, in Mexico.

Breaking free from an imposed form

Circé works with anything she has to hand. Her art is made up of a combination of acrylic paint, charcoal, crayon, and pastels, which she applies to just as broad a range of mediums, particularly tracing paper for the series Dissolvenze.

The artist focuses on representing the female body because it is her own, the body with which she has been intimately familiar since she was born but one that she has felt is somewhat imposed upon her in terms of social representation. ‘I was born a woman but society makes us more like women than we are’, she continues. To the artist, the definition of what represents a female body is not so clear, and this explains the ambiguity that emanates from her lines, which are sometimes reduced to splashes on the canvas.

In her art, Circé seeks to transcend the classic representations of the female body and shake up established ideas. She also injects hints of bright blue into her monochrome pieces; she makes the pigment herself and uses it raw. It’s a means of shattering the viewer’s, and indeed society’s, expectations.

More information about Circé’s work can be found on her Instagram account. Dissolvenze was exhibited in May 2021 at Madre Café in Mexico and part of it is now exhibited at Colectivo Anónimo as part of a permanent collaboration.