A mail art project by Camila Oliveira Fairclough
Limited edition of 2,500 postcards

As part of its programme for Bel SA employees, Lab’Bel has entrusted Franco-British-Brazilian artist Camila Oliveira Fairclough with the conception of a mail art project. This initiative follows on from the actions carried out in 2019 with American artist David Horvitz, whose Venetian project 435 Bridges and Some Shortcuts led to the production of a series of postcards.
A painter and exhibition curator, Camila Oliveira Fairclough develops an artistic practice in which language and painting intertwine. Her work proceeds through acts of sampling: fragments of slogans, song titles, packaging typography… Once isolated, these everyday elements are transformed into compositions in which the word becomes form, and in which reading and vision overlap.
Drawing on the practice of the ready-made as well as on the legacy of Pop art and Brazilian visual poetry, the artist re-examines mechanisms of meaning. Her work offers a double reading: that of form and that of meaning.

The LIVE, LOVE, LAUGH project

For the project she conceived for Lab’Bel, Camila Oliveira Fairclough takes up the expression “Live, Love, Laugh”, which has been widely disseminated in visual culture since the early 2000s. By placing this slogan on postcards depicting idealised landscapes, she creates a deliberate disjunction between the banality of the message and the unreal dimension of the image.
These postcards are not intended as simple illustrations: they are designed to circulate within everyday professional life, being made available to Bel SA employees in various shared spaces within the company — corridors of the Bel SA group headquarters in Suresnes, rest areas at the production sites in Lons-le-Saunier and Dole, and workspaces at the Maison de La Vache qui rit.
Renewing the perception of the professional space
By inserting these images into the working routine of Bel SA employees, the artist introduces a brief suspension of the ordinary rhythm. The artistic gesture seeks less to impose a positive message than to create the conditions for a renewed way of looking at the spaces in which it is disseminated.
The ambiguity of the chosen slogan — at once positive, conventional and charged with irony — encourages each individual to question the place of well-being in work environments, the way words circulate and become standardised there, as well as the possibility of a visual pause within the professional environment.

In its own way, the work acts as a discreet invitation to reconsider the company’s space beyond its utilitarian function. It is in this slight displacement that the project finds its meaning and relevance.