![Portrait of a Body](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![Portrait of a Body](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
![](/assets/artwork/1x1-42817eea7ade52607a760cbee00d1495.gif)
Portrait of a Body
-
- 17,99 €
-
- 17,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A portrait of flourishing desire in a body ever-changing
As she examines her life experience and traumas with great care, Delporte faces the questions about gender and sexuality that both haunt and entice her. Deeply informed by her personal relationships as much as queer art and theory, Portrait of a Body is both a joyous and at times hard meditation on embodiment—a journey to be reunited with the self in an attempt to heal pain and live more authentically.
Delporte's idyllic colored pencil drawings contrast with the near urgency that structures her confessional memoir. Each page is laden with revelation and enveloped in organic, natural shapes—rocks, flowers, intertwined bodies, women's hair blowing in the wind—captured with devotion. The vitality of these forms interspersed with Delporte’s flowing handwriting hold space for her vivid and affecting observations.
Skillfully translated by Helge Dascher and Karen Houle, Portrait of a Body provokes us to remain open to the lessons our bodies have on offer.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Delporte (This Woman's Work) reckons with sexuality, identity, and belonging in this searching and intimate graphic memoir. Detailing the realization of her own lesbian identity at age 35 in soft-pencil cursive and full-page drawings, Delporte interrogates her past relationships ("The whole game is rigged"), grapples with the enduring toll of sexual traumas, and bemoans "compulsory heterosexuality" (per Adrienne Rich). Throughout, she confronts nagging worries over queer authenticity ("I was afraid of having to perform my new sexuality to be accepted"). As she lays bare her insecurities and anxieties in concise ruminations, she cites the many artists and theorists (including Chantal Akerman, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Rich) who've helped her make sense of the world. Probing lines of text snake between drawings of vulvar flowers, agate slices, lichen, film stills, and lovers in repose. There's an intuitive cast to the interplay of calm, bright images and often-restless confessions, while the discreet "pencil swatch" color tests scribbled at the margins of many pages underscore the artist's enduring interest in process—and her recognition that each person remains an ongoing work in progress. "Time hasn't healed all my wounds," Delporte writes, "and yet here I am, still very much alive." The result is a poignant, sometimes tortured, but ultimately hopeful study.