Bella Laflamme (b. 2002) graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa in 2024. Based in Ottawa, her work has been featured in group exhibitions at Wallspace Gallery and in the Ottawa Design Club zines Building Bridges and Chaos. Working across painting, installation, and digital media, her practice explores tensions surrounding structure and domesticity.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My practice is centered around the tension between stability and instability, using structural forms, objects, and gestural painting to explore how these conditions influence each other. Anchored in domestic space and the idea of “home,” my work uses these sites to understand habits and impulses. Childhood homes are founding structures through which we begin to understand the world and ourselves. These structures become a reference point for what we deem normal and what we choose to carry on, or reject, as we grow. Using rough materials that refer to the framing of domestic architecture alongside gestural and fragmented painting, artworks stage the dysfunction and chaos that can be found in these spaces. Drawing from personal histories, I question how we are shaped by our childhoods, what we build upon and what we destroy.