Chupas

Technique: Mixed media drawings in ink on fine paper, glazed stoneware and porcelain.
Exhibition available in several formats.

Chupas are statuettes 30 to 40 cm high. Sabine Lalande shapes them by hand, from stoneware or porcelain clay, using a process that requires thought and precision. Working with the clay, sometimes laden with organic and mineral matter, gradually reveals the bodies, allows for the creation of poses and the formation of heads.
Sabine Lalande extends this slow sculptural development by nourishing it with watercolor and Indian ink drawings, made on paper whose finesse contrasts with the raw materiality of the earth.

Before the first firing, Sabine Lalande sometimes drills holes in the dried clay and splashes the statuettes with kaolin milk. Then comes the glazing: gold paint, colors traditionally used to decorate porcelain dishes from China, Saxony, Sèvres, or England, milky glazes with acidulous colors that, during the second firing, ooze and melt like crystal sugar with a fruity and bitter taste: with their wavy hair, the Chupas are for Sabine Lalande ghostly metaphors of the famous eponymous lollipops.

With open hands and outstretched arms, the Chupas create closed, floating universes between them, reflections of our consumerist, pop, and naive world, somewhere between "fin de siècle" decadence and "kawaii" (cute, in Japanese) trends. The Chupas are sometimes presented on video screens, animated by regular, haunting movements.