Violaine Desportes

After obtaining a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature at the École Nationale Supérieure de Lyon, Violaine Desportes was drawn back to her childhood passion for drawing. A whole new career opened up for her, sketched out by her charcoals and pencils. In 2018, she obtained her Agrégation d’Arts Plastiques.

The preciousness and quality of her strokes have been recognized as far afield as the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the Institut de France, which awarded her the prestigious Prix David-Weill du Dessin in 2022; this work is part of the Peut-être series presented by Galerie Ars Longa. Recognition of her work continues to grow with her various group exhibitions across France. Her acclaimed exhibition at the Condition Publique in Roubaix in 2022 brought her talent to the attention of the national and international press (The Art Newspaper).

“Through realistic representation, I try to make visible what is immediately present for everyone, and at the same time invisible. By making an aesthetic object out of a bag or a garbage can, I create the conditions for its visibility. In other words, the possibility of taking a step back from an everyday object often reduced to its utilitarian dimension”, says the artist.

Her works, presented exclusively in 2023 by Galerie Ars Longa in the exhibition Variations urbaines, tracked childhood and adolescence. A fine, unexpected subtlety in which we all find ourselves, to the point of joining the poetic levitation of her characters; aerial portraits in which the artist reveals the extent of her talent. In March 2024, she created her first Solo Show at the Galerie, entitled Les Oiseaux. In it, she depicts teenagers caught in the act of taking flight, freeing themselves from their bodies fettered by all kinds of boundaries – norms, determinisms, neighborhoods – both visible and invisible.

In August 2024, along with 10 other local artists, Violaine took part in the Double Jeu exhibition at the Maison ST SO in Lille station, in response to the theme of “art, body, sport and movement”. Galerie Ars Longa gives her the opportunity to take part in the Lyon Art Paper contemporary art show. She presented Les Vigies, a series of works that won her the ARALYA prize. In October 2024, she was featured in the first issue of Opale Art Magazine Contemporain. The following month, Violaine Desportes was awarded the Tournai International Prize for her charcoal drawings on paper.