Héloïse Brillet graduated in Japanese literature and art, focusing on the intersection of cultures and techniques. She creates drawing, painting, engraving, digital drawing… In her works, she uses motifs, color palettes and papers that refer to Japan, her country of heart. Also the titles of her works or the texts written directly on her images are often references to Japanese literature. She generally creates freely as her inspiration takes her, then it’s when she takes a step back from her work that she finds associations of themes and composes her “momentanéses” in particular. Her recurring motifs are everyday life, feminism and ecology.

Momentanées serie

Les Momentanées are compositions of works and fragments created especially for an exhibition that marks a milestone in the artist’s life. The moment of the exhibition invites retrospection, while the artistic practice pushes forward into the future. The Momentanées are as if the artist were turning back to observe the road traveled, and gathering the elements created along the way. Between shapes, colors and themes, connections are made and the artist proposes a composition. At the end of the exhibition, the Momentanées are dismantled, and the elements that make them up can be reused for a different artwork. Their acquisition is the only way to preserve their shape. It is by removing them from the artist’s life that they take on their definitive form.

Momentanées series for Seito magazine (October 30th-November 2nd 2025)

This series focuses on Seito 青鞜 (‘Blue Stockings’) magazine (1911-1916), Japan’s first feminist magazine, created and run entirely by women. While working on a translation, Héloïse came across the engravings accompanying the magazine, created by artist and poet Chieko Takamura, and decided to use them as visual support, illustrating a certain image of femininity in early 20th-century Japan. The artist explores the links between the struggles of these women and our contemporary struggles through the interplay between these engravings, excerpts from translations, personal visuals, and the color purple (not present in the originals), which refers to the suffragettes who were a source of inspiration for the contributors to Seito magazine and continue to be so for us today. 

More about her translation and illustration work is available on her website ateliertsundoku.fr