Women - 2024 - Joëlle Kem Lika

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My guideline is : to paint woman, dynamic, powerful, and yet tender… above all full of life, animated by the joy of life.
Laid bare, the woman is ONE in the strength of the ocean.
what she feels and what her body tells us is:
” I am naked, I am one, I am”
I want to translate vitality, exuberance, by movement, a surfer in action on the top of the wave, or in peace, the infinite… the depth of Life… a kind of independent, joyful femininity, collected, or concentrated.

I chose to paint tattoos on the whole body that evoke Aboriginal art, to remind us that women have been around since the beginning of time too…, in this rather masculine world… and thus create an abyss in time between this ancestral woman and the modernity of the surfer…

All the life drive concentrated in a relaxed, mobilized body in peaceful, pleasurable action… for her own pleasure.

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Surf art
Encouraged by the success of my surfer women, I have reproduced some of them on Dibond : high quality reproductions of the original art work, directly printed on double layered aluminium, with a hanging bar.

The result is a very contemporary piece of waterproof art… It can be hung in a swimming pool dressing room, a bath room… You can check about my tattooed surfer women theme on the “Surfers” series pages.
I paint all the women of the world in my surfers, young or not, intrepid, dynamic, in all their female beauty.

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My guideline is : to paint woman, dynamic, powerful, and yet tender… above all full of life, animated by the joy of life. Laid bare, the woman is ONE in the strength of the ocean. What she feels and what her body tells us is:
” I am naked, I am one, I am”

I want to translate vitality, exuberance, by movement, a surfer in action on the top of the wave, or in peace, the infinite… the depth of Life… a kind of independent, joyful femininity, collected, or concentrated. Make the ancestral woman a modern surfer, all the life drive concentrated in a relaxed, mobilized body in peaceful, pleasant action… for her own pleasure.

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Tribute to the great

I have chosen to revisit the works of great Masters, naked women painted by men, not just any men : Sandro Botticelli, Gustave Moreau, Paul Gauguin, Gustave Courbet…
Each of these well known painters have changed how women are perceived. They have, each one in his own time, created a new vision of woman and an innovative pictural approach.

I did not want languid bodies, awaiting, offered, women in a passive attitude, virgins covered with a pile of tissues, angels… heroins of mythologies…

I wanted to represent bodies of women alive, present, carnal…
I have «matured» this subject for a year, from the choice of each painting to the style of representation…

I have already worked on women as a subject, my women surfers :
the first ones I have tattooed, symbolising Life to me, the freedom of these women surfing on the waves, mastering the tumultuous ocean, alive, image of the ancestral woman, original, contemporary, joyful, a warrior, in harmony with explosive Nature.

This time I have chosen bodies of naked women likely to represent all women, from ancestral to modern, from androgynous to pulpy.

I love the Aspara sculptures in the Khmer temple of Angkor, Cambodia, voluptuous, carnal, simply beautiful ; I am moved whenever I see them, a pleasant emotion, an apeasement.
They radiate an accepted femininity, tranquil, a great presence without struggle : «I am this woman… I live, I am alive… I accept myself as I am…»

The title of my exhibition «The Untouchables» came to me as these accomplished, «perfect», art works seem to me just that : untouchable.

But my sensitivity as an artist and as a woman prevailed.
And I wanted to confront these masterpieces.
How to paint these women ?
How to transform them ? in 2014.

As I love Hugo Pratt’s work, especially his water colours, I have taken the liberty to interpret his comic strip style paintings, black and white backgrounds… with a few variations.

I wanted to change the perception of how these artists are perceived ;
with my tattoos, I wanted to softly touch these female bodies, to create a «meskin», tender, powerful, harmonious, voluptuous, sensitive…
reflexion of the most profound.

I want to pay hommage to women.
Woman has been around since the beginning of times too… :-))
A large part of humanity… and many of us are living in this world under circumstances similar to the Untouchables in India ??
Often very violent circumstances.
Tattoos to remind us that some women have been tattooed for painful reasons, politics… announcing death, such as in the concentration camps, or on the other hand characteristic personal and positive signs claimed by tribes…

Transforming these tattoos into lace, into small dots, various small inoffensive patterns… as an act of reparation…
I absolutely want to respect the sacred signs of all the people of the World, and have developed my own personal tattoos. No reference to anything else :
I just wanted to create an impression of beauty, of a precious body, the naked woman but protected by her tattoos, like a reflection of the inside, of the profoundness of being… feminine.

And I have let my unconsciousness and my emotions express themselves.
I also wanted to tattoo a mannequin, just for the beauty of it,
as an amusement.

Surfers

Surfers on dibond

Nudes

Untouchables