BASTIENNE SCHMIDT
Artist Statement
In her latest series Typology of Women, the award-winning photographer and artist Bastienne Schmidt shows a series of hand painted cutouts that represent silhouettes of different types of women. The term “typology” has been consciously chosen, as it refers to the study or the systematic classification of types that share certain characteristics. The comparison of forms and the study thereof is based on well-known artistic working principles. Schmidt uses typologies to articulate how female identities are being constructed, but not necessarily defined.
Bastienne Schmidt’s silhouettes in luminous orange show a feminist and ironic twist to the reading of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own.
Schmidt grew up in Greece as the daughter of an archaeologist which influenced her creative process in many ways. Inspired by Greek ancient ceramics and their thin lined figure drawings, as well as Japanese woodcuts, fairytales and American pop culture, she playswith archetypal forms, adding new elements and enigmatic transformations to it. These silhouettes portray nuances, rather than confirming certain identities. A book with the same title has been published by Jovis and is distributed by DAP.
www.bastienneschmidt.com