Carole Mousset is a Brussels-based multimedia artist exploring intimacy and the body as a fluid, ever-shifting container. She distorts inner realities through dreamlike, erotic, and organic imagery. Her use of body fluids – both symbolic and formal – evokes poetic, visceral questions of embodiment and emancipation.
Where did you grow up, and in what ways do you feel that environment has shaped your artistic voice?
I grew up in a small town in Brittany, in the northwest of France. It was a small town, where I always felt on the edge of the world. Not a big city, not a village either, something in between that could be as comforting as it was frustrating.
I come from a family background that isn’t a part of the artistic sphere, but where curiosity was always encouraged. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always been drawn to the act of creation and expressing my emotions through both drawing and writing.
It was during my teenage years, when a friend invited me to join her for painting lessons with her aunt, who was an artist, that I truly realised how important it was to me. Every Saturday morning, I was transported into a world I desperately wanted to be a part of. This free-spirited woman, in her large apartment/studio filled with antique furniture, paintings, and travel souvenirs, embodied everything I wanted to become one day. Even though I had a completely romanticised idea of her life, she helped me understand the kind of woman I wanted to grow into.
Your work is deeply visceral and intimately personal. What first drew you to this raw mode of expression?
I’ve always had a strong interest in the representation of intimacy, in works that deal with what “shouldn’t” be shown. I believe this became more pronounced during my teenage years through the personal experience of illness. Starting high school is a pivotal moment in the learning of intimacy. It’s often a time when one becomes aware of their body and their own relationship to desire.
Experiencing illness during that time deprives you of that learning, as your concerns shift entirely when the intimacy of your body is disrupted by the medical environment and has to endure multiple side effects. Representing intimacy through art becomes a lifeline when it’s difficult to express it otherwise.
When I speak of intimacy, I also mean the interior of the body. There is nothing more intimate and at the same time more universal than flesh.
You’ve mentioned being inspired by Cronenberg’s idea of the “creative cancer” (viewing the body from the perspective of disease). How does this lens influence the way you depict the body in your practice?
Discovering David Cronenberg’s work in my twenties was one of the most powerful artistic shocks I’ve ever experienced. He has a way of representing the world that departs from conventional standards of beauty, yet with an intensified eroticism. I see it as a way of viewing beauty and desirability in what is not supposed to be beautiful. It’s a vision of the world that embraces corrupted, mutated bodies and presents them as the norm.
In my own work, I try to adopt that perspective by depicting corrupted flesh and elements that would normally provoke disgust, but attempting to make them visually compelling. I use reframing to abstract certain suggestive elements, blur to soften the image, and I highlight the glossiness typical of viscous materials so that what once seemed unsettling becomes a dreamy landscape of matter.
I feel that the very expression “creative cancer” directly resonated with my past experience and became deeply embedded within me. A quote from David Cronenberg in an interview with Serge Gründberg particularly resonates; “I don’t understand why there are no beauty contests for the insides of bodies. Most beautiful spleen, best kidney…”
How would you describe the evolution of your artistic style? Were there pivotal moments that shifted your direction?
I feel like I’ve always followed a fairly consistent guiding line: the desire to represent the body (especially its interior) by playing with the porous boundary between attraction and repulsion. Discovering gore cinema while I was in art school was a huge source of inspiration and offered a powerful form of catharsis.
However, at some point, I realized that it was possible to express the same intentions and evoke the same emotions while being less violent. That marked a turning point toward a practice that incorporates more softness and subtlety, while still aiming to provoke a certain discomfort at times.
What do you think motivates you to create your work?
The desire to create ambivalent emotions, ones that can speak to others beyond myself. And, like for many artists, my work has a therapeutic dimension. I create in order to explore different facets of my vision of intimacy, to find comfort at times, and to approach the body differently by making peace with it.
Body fluids play a striking role in your work. Would you say their use is primarily symbolic, material, or something more instinctive and emotional?
I’d say it’s all of those things at once. Their use is symbolic, since the representation of fluids is loaded with meanings tied to myths and beliefs. Speaking about fluids inevitably means speaking about the body, but not just any body: it’s about an intimate body that spills outward.
It’s also material, in the sense that technically, it’s a fascinating subject in painting. It allows for an exploration of movement, viscosity, and the act of oozing or dripping. Finally, it’s undeniably emotional. In French, there are many expressions that use liquid metaphors to speak about feelings, like s’épancher (to pour one’s heart out) or cracher ses émotions (to spit out one’s emotions).
Do you think this age of increasing “digital disembodiment” influences or affects your work?
It’s difficult to answer that question. On one hand, I would say that painting goes against the idea of disembodiment, since its purpose is to anchor an image in time as durably as possible. The waiting time between each layer in oil painting contributes to that sense of permanence.
On the other hand, the internet is an endless source of visual references.
In any case, I find it particularly meaningful to represent damaged, corrupted bodies in an era where standardised perfection has become the ultimate goal.
You describe your work as “dreamlike and sometimes erotic.” What’s the line between sensuality and surrealism in your artwork, and how do you walk that line?
I’m not sure exactly how to depict it. The presence of an erotic charge in my work is sometimes intentional, but other times it is others who feel it. I find it difficult to deliberately create eroticism in painting, especially when the subjects oscillate between abstraction and figuration. But it is also at this boundary that eroticism is found by chance, becoming even more powerful. As for the dreamlike quality, it is easier to master. It is born in abstraction, in the handling of light and sparkles. It is a precarious line drawn depending on the canvas and their subject.
Where is your sanctuary?
The sea in Brittany, my studio, my friendships.
What are your hopes for the future?
I personally hope to free myself from my constant anxieties in order to grow older more peacefully and keep creating until the very end. More generally, in these times, the only thing we can hope for and demand is a permanent ceasefire.