Olivia Descampe

“I just do it." This is what I've been answering to questions about my inspiration and creation process for collages and decollages.

The trigger to my creative process is a basic urge, a need, that I instinctively fulfil. I go hunting through piles of magazines from the 1950s to the 1980s and I gather, carve out, and tear pictures that literally grab my eye. The feel of old paper on my fingers, the smell of mildew and cardboard rising as I turn the pages and deep-dive into lost aesthetics... those hours spent cutting and arranging striking images are like a sensory meditation. It is very much like breathing for me. This is why I need to feel, touch, smell as I create. I do everything by hand using original vintage publications. All my tools and techniques are old-school analog, never digital. There is no such thing as virtual air.

Compulsively, yet organically, I assemble, deface old pictures, piecing together an entirely new one. Just as I go through life, constructing and deconstructing myself. It's as if, following my senses, I get to my otherwise elusive essence. The result can be weirdly beautiful, unsettling or anything in between, as my hands put together snapshots from my inner conversations, a fleeting mood, or of a meaningful change. It all just comes to me in the moment and I think this is what each piece captures, an instant of my inner state and conversation. When I look at my different series of the past years, I see a reflection of my evolution, self-destruction and reinvention as my inner contradictions and opposite sides come together as one in my art.

Developing my personal style, I've stayed true to my trust in happy accidents and ironic silver linings. I discovered and developed my own decollage technique.