Carmen Schabracq (Amsterdam, NL, 1988) creates paintings, sculptural installations, textile pieces 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, she places her characters in spaces of colour, to briefly escape from this world and imagine yourself in another, 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.
