Solène Kerlo

Solène Kerlo’s work is a quest for origins: it examines the relationship of modern humans to their roots and their mythological unconscious. Through her research, she delves into the myths of the world’s creation, their motifs, and their symbols, seeking to uncover the primordial and universal story that nurtured and shaped human civilization during the earliest stages of its consciousness.

Her art invites us to relive the time of origins: a time when we were still lulled by the song of symbols and the poetry of imagination, a time when the sacred manifested in every phenomenon of nature, an ancestral era that continues to inhabit our unconscious and our bodies.

The mythological soul resonates once more, and her works echo its presence. At the edge of abstraction, her paintings and sculptures invite deep meditation. Her latest series explores funerary rites and conceptions of death within mythologies.

“What perception did early humans have of their mortality? Did they think humanity was inherently mortal from the beginning? Did they believe in an existence beyond death? A year ago, I embarked on a journey to explore these fundamental questions that have captivated the human imagination since its origins and have shaped our perception of death to this day.

After examining the myth of Emergence and the primordial birth of humanity in my series Seed of Civilization, I wanted to explore, in this new series, the myth of the Fall and the arrival of mortality among humans. Many traditions attribute this finitude to the consumption—or non-consumption—of a sacred plant, one that is both mortal and immortal. Related to the Biblical narrative of the forbidden fruit, this ancestral motif has enriched the ontology of our species since the Paleolithic era.”

Portrait © Pauline Gouablin