Karine Locatelli

Karine Locatelli lives and works in Les Éboulements, near Charlevoix (Quebec), where she has established her studio-gallery. This region of dramatic landscapes, bathed in the shifting light of the Saint Lawrence River, became a cradle of pleinairism in the early twentieth century, when great masters journeyed there with their easels to capture a landscape still untouched by industrial transformation. 

The Quebec artist has been in residence in Charleroi since 7 March, as part of the partnership between Centre Bang (Chicoutimi) and BPS22.

Her practice revisits the plein-air tradition in a con­tem­po­rary context, moving away from any purely picturesque rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the landscape. Instead, she introduces elements that evoke multiple forms of life and traces of human activity. Responding to the shifting contours of the landscape, Karine Locatelli undertakes a perceptive exploration of an environment she appears to merge into. Back in the studio, she tears her blank cotton canvas, creating varying dimensions. Once she has shaped this into the desired form, using coloured inks and a pen, she builds up – stroke by stroke – the vegetal, mineral and artificial contours of the landscapes she has traversed. The works are then placed on the floor, hung on the wall or sometimes stretched over frames.

From the moment she arrived in Charleroi, Karine Locatelli was drawn to the city’s slag heaps. Drawing on the practices of collecting and sketching that shape her work on the other side of the Atlantic, observing traces of life and documenting her explo­rations through photography, she draws her pen across woven cotton to create flexible works in which motifs from Art Nouveau or comic-strip panels occa­sion­al­ly appear. Seeking to draw our attention to the presence of nature within an urban landscape – where every tree and every fragment of greenery may seem all the more precious – Karine Locatelli has installed her works beneath the glass roof of the museum’s Great Hall. They form fragments of a journey shaped by landscape, presented here to take us to the foot of Le Martinet, along the paths of Le Calvaire, through the winding contours of the Terril des Piges and up to the heights of the Halde Saint-Théodore.

The artistic research carried out by Karine Locatelli during her residency is on view at Porcelaine et faits divers and "…puisque bafouillent aussi les astres", our current exhibitions running until 3 May 2026, and will also be presented at the Printed Image Fair on 9 and 10 May 2026 as part of Papier Carbone.

Find Karine Locatelli on Instagram and on her website.