Maude Arsenault

Maude Arsenault’s Entangled (Deadbeat Club, 2023) serves as a poignant, companion investigation to Resurfacing, deepening her exploration of female identity, bodily autonomy, and intergenerational memory. Where its sister volume confronts the act of emerging into self-presence, Entangled turns inward to examine the intricate, often fraught webs of domesticity, caregiving, and matrilineal heritage. Positioned within Arsenault’s broader trajectory, the work cements her transition from commercial fashion imagery into a deeply personal, formalist interrogation of privacy, exposure, and womanhood.

Aesthetically, the project relies on quiet spatial tension, soft natural illumination, and delicate gestural framing. Arsenault employs compositions where domestic interiors, textiles, and human forms become intimately intertwined, suggesting both security and restriction. Through tactile surface textures, obscured figures, and subtle atmospheric shifts, her visual language emphasizes emotional complexity over outward display. The imagery balances fragile intimacy with structural discipline, capturing the unspoken physical and psychological bonds that define domestic life.

Maude Arsenault’s Resurfacing (Deadbeat Club, 2023) functions as a deeply intimate interrogation of female autonomy, domesticity, and the physical body within contemporary visual culture. Situated at the intersection of portraiture, landscape, and performance, the work examines how identity is constructed and reclaimed against historical legacies of the male gaze and gendered spatial constraints. Within Arsenault’s broader practice, the project marks a crucial transition from her commercial fashion origins toward a self-reflexive, formalist exploration of vulnerability, agency, and matrilineal identity.

Aesthetically, the work relies on a nuanced, tactile visual vocabulary defined by soft natural light, muted palettes, and subtle spatial tension. Arsenault employs deliberate framing and gestural compositions, often depicting figures partially obscured, merging with surrounding environments, or in states of quiet pause, to convey interiority rather than spectacle. The interplay between interior domestic spaces and expansive natural landscapes establishes a structural rhythm that underscores the physical and psychological act of "resurfacing", emerging into

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