BELLA LAFLAMME
(b.2002, Ottawa, Ontario) received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the University of Ottawa in 2024. Her practice centers on 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,” her work uses these sites to understand the habits and impulses that spring from these conditions. Childhood homes are foundational 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 forward or reject, as we grow. Using rough materials that reference 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, she questions how we are shaped by our childhoods, what we build upon and what we destroy.