Julia Aknin

Art student at Beaux-Arts de Paris

[juliaaknin]

My sweet Penelope 💜

[juliaaknin]

Pictures of my 3rd year diploma at Beaux arts Paris 🌸🍭

[i-miss-2013]

Me and who:

💋 Taglisters: @2543jj @cottoncandywhispers @lou007sstuff @bambibabydoll123

[juliaaknin]

New Year’s Eve makeup, 2024

Acrylics and varnish on plaster and tow fiber

55 cm x 48 cm

This painting is a reproduction of the poplar makeup tutorials shared on instagram around the years 2013-2014

The plaster gives a disturbing volume to the content, already in a distorted shape.

It questions aspects of seduction such as makeup and how we pose in front of a camera. Seeing These tutorials, I built my some of my notions of feminity and habits around it. What can it mean for other girls who engaged with it, did it play a role in the woman that they are today as well as it did for me ?

[juliaaknin]

Killing time, 2024

Oil painting on canva

100cm x 100cm

Inspired by retrica’s heart photo montage, popular in the years 2010’s

[juliaaknin]

VOLE, 2023

Acrylique sur plâtre, filasse et plastique

Acrylic on plaster, tow and plastic

130 cm x 70 cm

45 cm x 25 cm

This work explores light and colors. trying to break free from the traditional frame painting format.

I gave the plaster a draped print, engaging the painting in a memory-like atmosphere, with floating shadows of figures and a frozen kiss.

[juliaaknin]

PROM, 2023

acrylique sur papier / acrylic on paper

150 cm x 200 cm

This painting is a work on prom, power attributes and symbols, but also seducive materialism in girlhood and adolescence.

These paintings of dresses on paper allows the subjects to be vulnerable and fragile, the paper cracks in some spots and it is also folded in 6, giving a « passing note » feeling.

[juliaaknin]

GAGA, 2023

acrylique et vernis sur papier aquarelle marouflé sur bois et néons

/ acrylic and varnish on watercolor paper, lacquered wood and neons

42 cm x 58 cm

THE ICON !!!!

This work explores power and seductive attributes, especially makeup and the effect of « looks » on the viewer.

It is also borrowed from internet images and edits, I tried to respect the social media aesthetic, especially around 2013-15 instagram.

The varnish gives it a commercial finish, blurring the lines between art and advertisement.

[juliaaknin]

Vintage Barbie Doll tutorial, 2023

acrylique et vernis sur plâtre / acrylic and varnish on plaster

32 cm x 22cm

[juliaaknin]

PORTIA MUNSON “I was always really attracted to and loved the color pink, but I think I wanted to know what it was about,” she explains. “When I got to art school, and later, I was thinking, well what is it about this color? Why am I attracted to it? It can’t just be that it symbolizes passive prettiness.” She went on to expound the color’s force, and to capitalize on the way it has been used to categorize women. New York-based multimedia artist Portia Munson, at the intersection of sculptural installation, photography, painting and sculpture, raises pressing concerns around nature and feminism. The excruciating exercise of accumulating the objects – castoffs from yard sales and thrift shops, trash from along roadsides and streams, give-away piles, and landfills - take the form of unflinchingly maximalist art installations. The American artist categorises and assembles thousands of these found mass-produced objects, and organises them into densely layered pieces that emphasise the colour of the object and intended function.

“Our modern cultures produce so much stuff, we define ourselves and express our values through the commodities we surround ourselves with. I hope my work helps people recognise that there are embedded meaning(s) in this stuff and that it helps tune us into a deeper way of seeing,” concludes Munson.

This next article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Pace chapter. The majority of my conversation with Munson centered around her exhibition, “The Pink Bedroom,” and she gave me such an interesting inside perspective on the piece. “Our stuff defines who we are” and creates the world around us. So when confronted with just how fetishized the commercialization of women’s items and media are, it should be a space that provokes emotion, good or bad. This is exactly the type of reaction from an audience that Munson desires as an artist. With how regularly we see our culture as consumers changing, the products that we interact with change with us and reflect who we are. My final question for Portia Munson might be considered a cliché one, but important nonetheless: what advice would you give to college-aged women like the ones in Her Campus? Her answer was a perfect one. Firstly, following your passions and interests no matter what they are is the best thing you could possibly do, as “the most important audience is yourself.” And lastly, the world as we know it is “made up,” so we never have to accept what is given to us as our fate. We are free to create the world for ourselves that we want to see, just like we do in our art and expression. To support Portia Munson and follow her work, she is most active on Instagram, @portiamunson, and is represented by PPOW Gallery here in New York City.          

[juliaaknin]

Siren-eye tutorial, 2023

acrylique et vernis sur plâtre / acrylic and varnish on plaster

33 cm x 25 cm

[juliaaknin]

Prom queens in shitty living rooms, 2023

acrylique, paillettes et vernis sur papier/ acrylic, glitters and varnish on paper

29,7 cm x 21 cm

series of acrylic paintings inspired by family pictures of girls ready for prom, in dusty, dark, dirty living rooms... Questions the contrast between their dream and their reality.

[juliaaknin]

Smokey eye tutorial, 2023

acrylique et vernis sur plâtre / acrylic and varnish on plaster

39,5 cm x 33 cm

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