„Feels like Summer“ 2025; 59x84cm; Watercolours, Gouache and Ink on fine art paper
Visual and sound artist Aelita le Quément is a French-Irish dual national based in Munich, where she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 2024. Since then, she has been an active presence in the local art scene, exhibiting work that engages with the Gen Z timespan — retrospectively examining a generation raised on the internet, a decade into the apex of US hegemony and through its soft/hard power initiatives, which the War on Terror kickstarted — a growing instability across the globe: gradually eroding public confidence in the US as a global force, followed by a multitude of financial crises, a skyrocketing cost of living, and the evisceration of the working class. A tumultuous time which is in focus in her practice, drawing on the nitty-gritty — taking on the appearance of an observer, analyzing various representation of control and freedom in popular media: street clashes, a news media apparatus that profits from induced fear and hatred, the broad appeal of online conspiracies and misinformation spread online, and the newfound appeal of right-wing populism in Gen Z circles — tracing the causes and reverberations of US imperial overreach, and the reactionary ideologies it has brought forth, as it loses its grip on control, growing increasingly authoritarian and tyrannical in the process.
Through theatrics, stage-building, and spatial recomposition, her practice draws on the cinematographic narrative tool of “show don’t tell” to capture the inner conflict of individuals she portrays within environments in the process of decay or drastic change. Tracing the tension and breaking point between the private self and the collective, she reaches toward acts of insurgency unfolding in real time, seeking to amplify them through her medium — giving prominence to the voiceless through hard-hitting symbols and timeless motifs.
„What happens on earth stays on earth“ 2025
A series of two paintings on Fine Art paper; 40×30 cm; Watercolours, Gouache and Ink colours
Within these two works, the narrative takes place at a side street in an affluent area where, through the use of hostile architecture, represented by the absence of walkable paths makes it difficult for individuals to move through these arts of the city without the use of automobile.
„Aelita’s visual language thrives in ambivalence, a confession layered with contradictions that asks: what snaps the fine thread tying weakness and wickedness?—Her characters are androgynous; their shapes dissolve gendered archetypes, creating spaces where uncanniness bleeds into deliberate expression. Mouths are taut with unspoken words, eyes narrow in resignation, and bodies serve as empty vessels channeling raw, unfiltered emotional pain. This calculated dissonance invites not just attention to its intricacies but voluntary engagement — an invite to complicity — as torment lingers in the negative space between gesture and meaning, silver lining a disquieting reality, glimpsed through the exposed gaps behind the mask: a raised border wall, fitted and battle-tested, gradually worn down“.
„Colonialism turned inward“ 2026
220×125×5 cm; Acrylic and oil colours on canvas
Derived from the political terminology of Blowback, “Colonialism Turned Inward” presents a desolate aerial view in which I portray fascism as an evolution of colonialism, one that ensued with an ever harsher surveillance apparatus. All these foreign interventions inevitably proliferate a violent communicative and physical expression that, left unchecked, is ultimately felt on the home front, manifesting in the form of martial law.
„Family Affair“ 2026; „There are a lot of good musicians but not a lot of good people“ 2026
220×125×5 cm; Acrylic and oil colours on canvas; 110×125×5 cm; oil colours on canvas
These two artworks represent the idea of tiptoeing around the conversation: standing by our morals, or taking the easy route and forsaking them to prioritize our own careers. The significance of becoming a careerist—never questioning where our earnings originated, nor voicing our held opinions and beliefs on contentious issues that might affect that “money faucet”— prioritizing our own safety net to the detriment of the values and community we once arose from, proudly associated with, and then quietly pushed aside once they had served us.
„I bet you’ve never danced a day in your life“ 2025
140×135cm Oil colours and Poppyseed on canvas 2025
Three friends, each distinct from the other, perform solely for our eyes. In the left corner, a figure reminiscent of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance era, an album that sits distinctly within his discography. Behind stand two characters representing opposing forces that battled throughout his life: the blue figure embodies avid consumption and gluttony, while the other channels Bowie’s radical spirit as a civil rights conscious advocate.
„If you close your eyes It’ll go away” 2026
40×30 cm; Watercolours, Gouache and Ink on fine art paper
I focus on this interchanging binary dilemma of using green energy to replace fossil fuels onlooking a bucolic landscape, but at a cost of reshaping the landscape with unintended consequences. I maintain an objective analysis, which concurs with the notion that there is no clear, distinct answer to reconciling environmental improvement alongside human settlement in these vulnerable ecosystems.
„Watership Down“ 2026
40 × 30 cm; Series of watercolours of Fine art paper.
Inspired by the 1970s English cartoon of the same name, it is based on the life of sentient rabbits desperately trying to adapt to the ramifications of human intervention on their habitat;a cruel reminder of human expansion on the countryside.
„Meticulously constructed universes strain against the edges of the frame, their narratives severed: a cropped leg, a vanishing point. When discovered, these absences threaten to anchor the viewer onto a misleading path, one shaped precisely by what has been withheld. Half-formed entities, ghostly and hovering in vacant, disintegrating spaces; their silence lingers, their gestures undisclosed“.
„All falls down“ 2025
190×140cm and Acrylic and Oil colours on canvas
A follow-up installment to the painting on the previous page „Feels like summer“ , this work showcases both the violence and the serene state within the ditch, where small mammals persist and thrive in all areas of life. This painting pays tribute to Francisco Goya’s The Third of May 1808 as well as The Death of Marat. I present the aftermath, the bodies being discarded after the deed is done, forgotten.
Working in tandem with fellow artist Veronica Burnuthian, the two invite both themselves and the viewer into an open set of questions: which role do we inhabit, and are we capable of meaningful change within our vicinity — whether that change is felt as illuminating or deeply unsettling? They work primarily through room-sized spatial installations, inviting LGBTQI+ artists to contribute their perspectives by expressing them before a broad audience, challenging assumptions and opening minds. Veronica and Aelita turn their attention toward institutions and art enthusiasts alike, asking them to sit with a difficult set of questions: does knowingly enjoying and consuming art produced by destitute, marginalized communities living under the threat of expulsion change the nature of that joy itself? And if every source of that pleasure were suddenly silenced or made invisible — would those who once partook in its celebration still bear the weight of the meaning its makers left behind, or would it dissolve quietly into obscurity, violently snuffed out — its diverse narratives smoothed over, its histories of prejudice whitewashed?
