Bio/Statement

Born in Switzerland, lives and works between Lausanne and Montréal. Xénia Lucie Laffely has a background in fashion design, french litterature, art history and feminist studies - studied in Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design of Geneva, University of Lausanne and University of Quebec in Montréal.

In 2020, she was shortlisted for the Swiss Art Awards (cancelled edition due of Covid). She has been awarded by the Swiss Design Awards (2018), the Leenaards Cultural Grants (2014) and the Hans Wilsdorf Award of Excellence (2012).

She had recent solo and duo shows at Kunstraum Niederosterreich, Vienna ; Valentin 61, Lausanne ; Casa Bianca, Montréal ; Last Tango, Zurich ; Ferme de la chapelle, Geneva.

She has participated in group exhibitions at Rad Hourani Gallery, Montréal ; Mayten’s, Toronto ; Plain Gallery, Milano ; Fondation du Doute, Blois ; Centre National d’Art Graphique Le Signe, Chaumont.

Laffely’s practice combines the traditional language of textile work with the contemporary aesthetic of digital photoshoped painting, creating hybrid pieces that questions hierarchies between art, design and crafts. She creates a lively sentimental reappropriation of issues related to domestic space, intimacy, queer love and self-fiction.

« Xénia Lucie Laffely’s visual language has an affinity to post-internet aesthetics with slick Photoshopped gradients as backdrops and trippy environments with surreal appearances of bodies. Her textile pieces are appealing and yet also somehow disturbing. It is a space inhabited by characters with hybrid identities, porous bodies with snake-like protrusions and claw-like nails, pointing to Laffely’s interest in the fine line between hyper femininity and the witch personal.

She devotes deep contemplation to their making, merging modern digital techniques with traditional craftsmanship to disrupt sexist and ethnocentric stereotypes associated with textile art. Through a very specific process of digital painting, textile printing, patchwork and layering, embroidering, quilting and framing, her work highlights the richness of a material lead approach of textile.»

Linda Jensen and Arianna GelliniLast Tango, 2019

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