Ut Barley’s collages and illustrations are an ode to feminine power and to our connection with nature, which she sees as a fairy tale-like diary.

Over the years, she has experimented with a blend of various different techniques for her analog collage: writing, embroidery, painting (watercolour, oil pastel, gouache) & also plants and flowers which she finds in nature.

Influenced by mythologies, Ut Barley’s collages are like illustrated fairy tales: changing bodies which transmute with their environments to reveal changing emotions, sometimes contradictory ones and which are concealed within each and every one of us. Her characters and imaginary worlds translate into the visual expression of a feeling, a state, a vision or a sensation... Through her enchanted immersions, she conjures the turmoil which are the direct consequences of a growing oppression, the consequences of our emotions on our civilization, the environment and the spirituality of our ancestors.

She creates hybrid characters, mysterious creatures that exist within a fantasy world filled with symbolism.

She tackles subjects that can seem provocative and terrifying such as physical and mental violence, the way we look at ourselves and at others as well as exploring our emotions or even our spirituality through the invisible world. She also does this by dealing with the themes of beauty, monstrosity, mysticism, bodily transformation or even strangeness.

Her work is a tribute to the power of the living and to our connection with nature. She has also since turned towards filmmaking in order to breathe new life into her collages which she sees as still frames from fantastical films, as if we had hit the pause button on an image from a dreamlike world.