Some travel diaries trace the path of roads taken, while others, instead, mapped out the shifting emotions of those traveling. Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon’s project, Motel 42, is the latest.

Emerging from a promise the artist made to herself — never sleep in the same room twice during her travel, even if she and her partner remained in the same city two nights in a row — Motel 42 presents the intertwining of inner landscapes and a love story unfolding against the backdrop of 42 anonymous motel rooms across the United States and Canada.

In this series of hand-colored analog self-portraits, the artist captures moments that feel both deeply intimate and strangely detached. Each image, meticulously staged in the hushed mornings of unfamiliar motels, serves as a visual entry in her emotional journal. Her use of vibrant oil paints overlays a vivid imagination onto the black-and-white film, creating a dissonance that makes us question what’s real and what’s dreamt. The dark undertones of her diary entries and her reflections on life on the road, impermanence, and modern-day USA, are concealed beneath the allure of beautifully rendered images, hinting at the contradictions between how things appear and how they are felt.

Her commitment to always remain on the move turned each new occupied space into a new world, filled with its own unique resonance and tainted by the emotions of the day. Some rooms seemed to hold onto the shadows of past guests, haunted by a strange presence or infused with a heavy, unsettling atmosphere. Others welcomed them with an unexpected sense of warmth and safety, as if offering a temporary reprieve. Each portrait reflects the shifting moods of the artist, from vulnerability to tranquility, from unease to quiet joy, revealing how our surroundings can shape our inner worlds, and the other way around.

Motel 42 is also a celebration of self-discovery and love’s luminous moments — the quiet thrill of sharing a new place with someone dear, the way mundane settings like motel rooms become secret worlds made meaningful by the presence of another. There’s a tenderness in these images that transcends their solitary atmosphere: two bodies lightly resting on a bed, a soft gaze caught in the reflection of a mirror. It’s in these small, suspended moments that Eloïse Labarbe-Lafon’s work reveals a sense of hope and intimacy, showing how the most transient spaces can transform into sites of profound connection.

Presented at LCG ARTLAB, Motel 42 is ultimately less about physical travel and more about the wandering mind —about the struggle to reconcile beauty and melancholy, joy and uncertainty, intimacy and distance.

Louise des Places