ABOUT ANNABELLE GUETATRA
Born in Colombes (France) in 1985, she lives and works in Brussels. After four years at the Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence (2002-2006), where she worked especially with photography and installation, she moves to Brussels, enrolls in La Cambre and gets her Master 2 Diploma in Drawing in 2009 with La Plus Grande Distinction, and in 2010, she gets the Agrégation with a Grande Distinction. She has had numerous shows in Belgium, France, England, Turkey, etc.In 2010, she is awarded three prizes: the Marie-Louise Rousseau prize, (Exhibition at the Ixelles Museum), the Prix Jeunes Artistes (Young Artists Prize) for drawing and painting (Exhibition at the PCF Brussels) and a prize of the Fondation belge de la Vocation (VOCATIO). In 2011, she wins the Collignon Prize at the Musée d'Art moderne et d'Art contemporain in Liège and the Coup de Coeur Prize offered by the ARTE NEWS Magazine at the Art On Paper drawing fair in Brussels. In 2013, she is awarded the Médiatine Prize of the Public in Brussels and the Young Artistic Talent Award and the International Artistic Prize in Tournai. And More... Annabelle Guetatra has magical fingers. With a few pencil strokes, a few touches of color, the young woman, recently graduated from La Cambre, who have received three prices in a row - price of the Vocation, price Rousseau at Ixelles and the price of the French Community, category painting and drawing, creates a world in itself. Her mysterious drawings put on a performance bodies with a fantastic sense of movement, inviting us to join the dance (of which) she is the only one who knows the steps. At the first sight, the characters come to life. The always gripping story surprises us, immersing ourselves into a tale with an unpredictable end. Annabelle excels in the art of sketching. Her strokes, we imagine sliding on the rustling paper, are tinged with a restraint spontaneity that contradicts the result of the work.
EAST AND WEST; BELGIUM AND TURKEY, NINE ARTISTS, DIFFERENT COUNTRIES-CULTURES-STYLES AND ONLY ON PAPER. "I" IN THEIR OWN WORDS” EXHIBITION STARTS AT G-ART (2014)
Nine successful artists from two countries; Yasemin Senel, Yavuz Tanyeli, Arzu BaIsaran,Rafet Arslan, Ahmet Sarı, Anya-Belyat Giunta, Annabelle Guetatra, Maja Ruznic, Marie Boralevi shall meet with viewers at G-Art, exhibiting their striking designs and paperwork in cooperation with Brussels Galerie d'YS.
Flights of Fantasy Part I: Annabelle Guetatra
Annabelle Guetatra invites her audience onto the surreal merry-go-round that is her imagination. Using elegant gestures, fluid lines and pure colours, her gentle style depicts figures frolicking in woodland. But her whimsical world is infected with a dark malice. The characters are hybrid creatures afflicted with the torments of inharmonious love. Stripped of their clothes they abuse each other as they fumble together in the undergrowth. Guetatra uses her naïve style to explore the sinister undercurrent of desire—conflict, jealousy and power.
Her work is informed by her extensive travel. Guetatra collects references to the ritualistic, the theatrical and the ceremonial, for what she calls her “private museum”, which is a source of continuing inspiration. This lends her characters the menacing familiarity of some half-remembered dream, creating a sense of the personal that entices.
For her Jesters series Guetatra added physicality to her work, creating grinning papier mâché heads full of her deceitfully child-like aesthetic. With huge eyes, bright colours and rounded, imprecise features the faces hover between distinct emotions. “They laugh at us,” Guetatra explains. “They shine, they glow gold and glitter, they attract but when we approach they reveal to us the terrible secret behind their frozen smiles.”