Evelyne Postic’s La reine charlotte, 2021 caught my attention and ultimately received the Annual Prize with its striking aesthetics and skillful execution. Drawn over a vintage map of British Columbia, Canada, the piece depicts forms that could be read as floating marine life or alien forms. Intricate lines create a visual moray where objects overlap/intersect with the underlying topographical map, referencing traditional printmaking and etching techniques. The artist works with diagrammatic parts of the map such as the compass, to pull forward, highlight and manipulate the alien forms and image plane.
When referencing Postic’s art practice, it’s clear that she’s built a fully developed aesthetic and conceptual world populated with strange beings, creatures, plants and microbes. These creatures are hybrids, combinations of map, diagram, line and form. They float like lost spirits, without scale they are both the size of continents and flattened by the glass slide in a microscope.