MORTVL
Mortvl (Ræ Azzopardi) is a multidisciplinary artist that specializes in illustration, painting, and graphic design. They grew up going between Tkaronto and a farm surrounded by woods, leaving them space to explore their creativity. Despite this idyllic fantasy, they developed CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) due to repetitive traumatic events that took place in their youth. Mortvl uses art as a tool to process, explore and heal from these events, while they simultaneously traverse philosophical realms. They continue to reside in the woods and involve themselves with nature, translating it into their art practice.
Creative Process:
Mortvl's practice examines nature, lifecycles, mental health, trauma, and healing. Often they conduct their narratives through animals and people, navigating them through the complexities of their existence. Their work documents the exploration of their identity and experiences by juxtaposing the beautiful and horrific. As someone who has C-PTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), they have utilized art as an outlet, and as a communicative device when at a loss for words. The scenes depicted are of what they see in their dreams, during flashbacks, dissociations and imaginative childhood memories which they portray in a vapor-surrealist manner. The colour and landscapes visually articulate the emotional tone, while conducting an atmosphere that corresponds with Mortvl’s psychological state. This coexists with symbolic sentient beings that are often revealing their innards, disclosing their vulnerability to the one thing we are all guaranteed after we are born, which is death.