Discover the contemporary work of CBLM
My name is Charlène Bethina Landon Merlino, I am 26 years old and I currently live in the Var, in the south of France. My artistic journey began with a passion for animated cinema, comics and illustration, which led me to pursue studies in this field. In 2018, I began a Bachelor in Computer Graphics and Multimedia, followed by a year at the Institut Supérieur d'Arts Appliqués de Nantes in 2018-2019.
However, feeling the need for freedom to fully explore my artistic practice, I made the decision to leave the academic framework and devote myself entirely to my art. In 2020, I turned to collage, a discipline that allows me to work with intuition and letting go. My compositions, influenced by tarot and divinatory oracles, are deeply inspired by the symbols and stories they convey, thus offering a narrative and introspective dimension to my work.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to live many enriching artistic experiences. I have participated in several exhibitions, notably in July 2022, June 2023 and March 2024, where I was able to share my world with the public. In July 2022, I was also a member of the selection jury and winner of a call for projects, a significant experience in my career. In addition, I explored the performative dimension of my art, with performances in September 2023 and June 2024.
In parallel with my artistic practice, I currently work as a graphic designer, a profession that nourishes my creativity and enriches my visual thinking. Today, I continue to pushing the boundaries of my practice, exploring collage in all its forms and seeking to reveal the evocative and narrative power of images. My work is guided by a quest for constant experimentation and by the desire to touch the sensitive and the imaginary through my creations.
As a collage artist, I am dedicated to exploring the collective unconscious and expressing the symbols and archetypes that shape our imagination. In a world where the production and consumption of images is accelerating at a dizzying pace, I strive to slow down this pace, to suspend the visual flow to invite deeper contemplation and reflection on the meaning, impact and evocative power of images.
My work also explores the tension between chaos and harmony, destruction and creation, life and death. Each collage is for me a process where fragments of images are torn, moved, deconstructed, and then recomposed to give birth to new meanings. This parallel between destruction and creation reflects the very dynamics of life: a precarious and fascinating balance between the opposing forces that shape our inner and outer world.
The exploration of the feminine, in all its diversity and multiple representations, is at the heart of my compositions. I question feminine figures through their richness, their complexity and their ambivalence, while anchoring themselves in universal archetypes and revealing powerful symbols. These representations question traditional visual codes to invite us to touch the imagination and the collective unconscious, while revealing the stories hidden in these fundamental oppositions between the ephemeral and eternity.
My creations are based on a mixture of contemporary images and, more rarely, visuals from ancient contexts. I use a variety of materials, such as modern magazines, posters, photographs from various periods and fragments of texts. This mix, where the past dialogues with the present, allows me to play on contrasts and establish a dialogue between the visual and the verbal, between memory and instantaneity.
My artistic approach is based on an intuitive method, guided by letting go and a dialogue with creative chaos. Each collage is born from a spontaneous quest for balance between destruction and recomposition, forms and stories. This process is strongly influenced by my interest in tarot and divinatory oracles, whose complex symbols inspire a deep reflection on existence, the cyclicality of life and the forces in tension that run through it.
Through my works, performances and exhibitions, I seek to open sensitive and narrative spaces where past, present and future come together in a universal dialogue. These compositions become visual stories where emotion, chaos, intuition and transformation intertwine, thus translating my artistic quest for meaning and depth in a constantly evolving world.
