Créature(s)

For her first solo exhibition at that’s what x said, Zyle tells her story and illustrates her relationship to the world through a collection of original drawings. With Creature(s), Zyle celebrates her alter ego. Creature is defined as “something created by someone,“ “that is built from scratch by an outside authority”. To the artist, this interpretation conjures the image of women being manipulated and modelled by the patriarchy. The Giant doesn’t conform to the norm; she’s attractive and seductive, but also repulsive and aggressive. She’s a being of loose morals, capable of being sweet whilst being violent, strange and marginal, using the dominant system’s codes to destabilise it.

In her life as well as in her art, Zyle invented an alter ego to free herself from the established ways. The Giant, both human and monster, hybrid and chimerical, helps her to reinvent herself and her identities, reconnect with her strengths and her vulnerability, and overcome the obstacles thrown her way. She embodies her twin with exaggerated feminine features, protected by a glamourous armour made of rhinestones, lace, glitters, vulgarity and sluttiness that empower her to love herself and exist differently.

For this exhibition, Zyle shares a collection of original drawings created over the past four years, in which she externalized her thoughts. She predominantly works with bright colours, in a naïve and honest style with raw lines that welcome imperfections. In her body of work, the Giant replaces the artist, personifies her moods, her relationship to others, to sex work, to her worries and dreams.

Zyle is a self-taught artist and sex worker based in Brussels. She started her artistic career through words, exploring her creativity in her notebooks. Slowly, her compositions evolved with her, her linework became more confident and her words more assertive. In her work, Zyle lets her anger roar, becoming a place in which she can exist freely.  She blends illustrations and texts, sweetness and aggressivity, social femininity and monstrosity. Zyle tells her stories of sex work, sexism, ego, patriarchy, fear, anger, but also of loving herself and feeling safe(r). She is currently working on her first graphic novel.