BIOGRAPHY
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a Cuban mother and Argentinean father, Cristina Barr left Argentina and her career as an English Literature teacher to come to Paris, which has been her home since 2001. She is known for her bold and intense paintings that intertwine the private and the public – the intimate and the political, combining autobiographical elements with stories from literature, and observations on the contemporary world. She uses colour and heavy brushstrokes to create unsettling tableaux which, at times, challenge the social and sexual codes still present mainly in Latin American societies. Charged with a unique psychic and emotional drama, her works, always inhabited by a strong female presence, express what it is to be a woman, particularly one living under the oppressive hierarchies and controlling conventions of patriarchal society.
CV
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1962), Cristina Barr lives and works in Paris, France. She studied Painting and Sculpture in Paris (Musée des Arts Décoratifs), and London (Central St Martin’s). Her art depicts mostly women of all ages, filled with memories and emotions, in a contemporary figurative, sometimes expressionistic style. She has exhibited her work in Paris, Lisbon, Rome, at the XIII Bienal of Florence, and in New York and Buenos Aires. Her work has been honoured with a solo exhibition at the Argentinean Embassy in Barcelona, Spain and in Doha,Qatar.
She has participated of a residence with Leila Tschopp (Argentina)
Private collections: Katara Cultural Center (Doha-Qatar) – Colección Inés Tonconogy
STATEMENT
I’m interested in the human condition, the psychological depth of the characters I paint, exposing their power but also their vulnerability. I choose my models, mainly from social media. People striving for their fleeting moment of glory on Instagram. People creating a performance of “self”. I would like the viewer’s psyche to be “disturbed” by the presence, the performative existence of my characters. At the other end, I’m also interested in the “voyeuristic” experience of the spectator. This is why I choose big, life-size formats. I aim at the confrontation of selves.
