Joëlle Dubois’ bold colourful paintings are a feast of ambiguities. Taking social media’s effect on predominantly female users’ lives as a main theme, she explores the digital maze running through these women’s very real lives. Irreversibly integrated in their homes, daily rhythms and sense of selves, smartphones become portals to an inevitably elusive world of ideals dictating everything happening offscreen. Addicted to social media, scrolling through images, staring at others – and in so doing at themselves – these women seem caught in an endless quest for both the ultimate version of themselves with regular doses of social contact and confirmation.

Dubois often paints women naked, exposed and made vulnerable by all they’ve seen and projected onto themselves, with unshaven chubby legs, in unflattering poses, relentlessly comparing themselves with the images on their phone. When engaged in social events, even the most intimate, they’re never really there, but always there. A mixture of hope, feminism, obsession, apathy, superficiality and realness reflect their frantically confused zeitgeist. With her unique visual language, inspired by Japanese erotic block prints, Dubois manages to use the countless ambiguities in her works for good. The naivety of the characters highlights a dazed but persistent quest for human connection, some sort of authenticity and understanding. She exposes harsh realities but manages to keep things light and hopeful even when they appear bleak and desperate, evoking a sense of compassion rather than cynicism.