In "Allégorie sur le monde", Françoise Deladoëy combines collage, watercolour and graphite to explore the upheavals of our contemporary world and imagine new possibilities emerging from its fragments.
With Allégorie sur le monde, Françoise Deladoëy presents a series of cut-paper collages combining watercolour, graphite and mixed media. Drawing on images and fragments taken from the press, she creates visual landscapes in which disparate realities meet, confront one another and undergo transformation.
Her work emerges from a sense of concern about the contemporary world and the profound changes shaping it. Environmental crises, the nuclear threat, technological transformation, industrial agriculture, the depletion of natural resources and the relentless pursuit of economic growth form the backdrop to an artistic practice marked by the feeling of a world in transition.
Cutting and collage become tools of transformation. By removing images from their original contexts and bringing them together with fragments from other realities, Françoise Deladoëy creates new associations. Reality gradually gives way to imagination: living organisms encounter machines, beauty exists alongside unease, and abundance confronts destruction. From these collisions emerge compositions that are strange, poetic and sometimes dreamlike.
Yet Allégorie sur le monde goes beyond portraying a fragmented world. The exhibition also questions what might emerge from these transformations. Between an established order that seems to be crumbling and something yet to be invented lies a space of uncertainty, but also of possibility.
A spiritual dimension also runs through this body of work. It appears less as an answer than as a series of questions: What place does humanity occupy within the living world? What remains of our connection to the Earth when our lifestyles and technologies increasingly transform our environment?
Cutting, shifting, juxtaposing and recomposing thus become ways of symbolically navigating contemporary chaos. From the fragments of an existing world, Françoise Deladoëy opens up a space in which other narratives, other balances and other visions of the world can still be imagined.
BIOGRAPHY
Françoise Deladoëy studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Sion from 1968 to 1973. She subsequently developed a practice centred on drawing and etching, exhibiting her work on several occasions. Three of her works were acquired by the Musée cantonal du Valais.
From 1987 to 2004, she collaborated with Swiss fashion designer Christa de Carouge, creating prototypes for the Habits Habitat project. These creations were presented in exhibitions and performances in Geneva, Lausanne, Zurich and Paris.
Alongside her artistic career, she pursued a personal exploration of perception and the invisible world. Also a medium, Françoise Deladoëy has been interested in extrasensory perception since childhood and has continued to explore spirituality and various mystical traditions throughout her life. She also trained in body-based and energy practices, particularly traditional Chinese medicine and shiatsu, before opening her own practice in Geneva in 2000.
In recent years, she has gradually reduced her therapeutic activities to devote more time to artistic creation. In November 2024, she participated in an exhibition of artists from Bernex at the Galerie Aux Portes de la Champagne. In December of the same year, she presented her 40 Petits Portraits at the Galerie de l’Écurie des Chèvres in Mase, in the Val d’Hérens.
Today, Françoise Deladoëy continues her artistic practice through drawing, watercolour, cut-paper collage and various mixed-media techniques, pursuing an approach in which visual creation, sensory perception and inner exploration remain in constant dialogue.
Stéphanie Prizreni
Espace Kugler Gallery
Avenue de la Jonction 19 · 1205 Geneva · Switzerland
espacekugler.net · @espace_kugler
FRANÇOISE DELADOËY
Allégorie sur le monde
Allegory of the World
14–25 October 2026
Espace Kugler Gallery
Opening reception: Wednesday 14 October at 6 pm
Closing event: Sunday 25 October at 5 pm
Reading by Françoise Deladoëy & improvised overtone singing by Jean-Christophe Lauraux
Opening hours: Thursday to Sunday, 4 pm–7:30 pm
And by appointment: +41 79 624 38 14
