Le temps arrêté, 2022
Le grand tilleul, 2021, oil on canvas
French artist Katia Bourdarel explores the collective psyche, evoking figures and symbols borrowed from tales or mythology. Working across a range of different media, she is best known for her oil painting and her refined realistic technique, inspired by Ingres, Zurbarán and Borremans. Bourdarel displays a fragile but fierce, sensual, and essentially feminine universe, investigating human emotions, the relation to self and "the other", on a quest for identity. In series like Narcisse and Persona, the human body - fragmented, wrapped or deprived of identifying traits - fluctuates between presence and absence.