San is a mixed-media artist living and working in Beersel, Belgium.

She’s always been interested in the quest for identity, how people live their lives, and how they feel.

Jumping from drawing to painting and often mixing different techniques, she creates pieces on instinct, acting as a catalyst for raw emotion, before it is verbalized and intellectualized.

She is influenced by psychoanalysis and the way emotion is experienced by everyone.

She’s also a tattoo artist, who explores the stories of her clients, translating them in her pictural vocabulary and symbols. She started tattooing in 2009 and opened her tattoo shop "Deuil Merveilleux" in 2012.

ABOUT THE WORK

When you remember an emotion, how does it feel like? It could be that clinging tension in your belly or holding on to your throat. An emptiness running to your core. We don’t live the same experiences, but we all feel the same emotions.

In these drawings, ink washes reveal a form, sometimes human, sometimes monstrous. Some marks are like shouted writings, or archetypal symbols to translate what happens in your mind and body when you’re upset. These forms are an attempt to testify to anxiety, trauma, love, and fear, from an angle other than personal feeling.

Text by Mélodie Oralarkaya