Carmen Schabracq

Carmen Schabracq (Amsterdam, NL, 1988) creates paintings, sculptural installations, masks and performances in which the theatricality of life plays an important role. She gathers stories from various myths, traditions and her own experiences and uses them to create collage-like visual narratives. The mask is a recurring object and theme in her work, which she uses to explore the complexity of human identity. A mask is a tool within a ritual or performance, to become 'the other' and she plays with this in various ways.

Her work is also a form of escapism because of the characters she places in spaces of colour. A way to briefly escape from this world and imagine yourself in another, full of playfulness and humour, to deal with the layered reality of life and death. Just as folkloric rituals and traditions do, for instance in the celebration of the seasons, to propitiate the gods, scare off demons and devils or celebrate fertility. Schabracq's work is a stylised theatre of her own cosmos, with references from art history and folklore such as costumes.

Carmen was born in Amsterdam (1988), where she now lives and works. In 2012 she obtained her BA in fine arts from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, after a year of painting studies at the Academia di Belle Arti in Rome. In 2015 she obtained her MA in theater costume design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, with a research and body of work she called 'naked masks'. In 2017-2018 she received the ‘new makers subsidy’ from the Performing Arts Fund NL, with which she made two in situ performances in Zeeland. Her work has been shown in several museums, like Stedelijk Museum Breda, Museum Tot Zover, Amsterdam and Nest, The Hague.

Exhibitions & fairs with the gallery:
Sources of Wonder
KunstRAI 2023
Day of the donkey
Extravaganza
Lockdown Show Part #3: Carmen Schabracq, Becoming Vincent

Press

Publications

Carmen Schabracq made two publications. Becoming Vincent I’'ll never walk alone is a Leporello with the works she made at the Vincent Van GoghHuis in Zundert. Together with the photographer and graphic designer Paul Koeleman, she made the book Is your body the pedestal of your head? In the book you can find a photo series of a selection of her masks with Carmen as the pedestal. There is also a text and an interview accompanied by some other images of her work.

Becoming Vincent I’'ll never walk alone | Leporello | 2021 | €15,00 (tax included)
Is your body the pedestal of your head? | art book | 2018 | 25.5 x 17.5 cm | €20,00 (tax included)

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