Chasing Rainbows Catalogue
WHERE ANGELS LIVE by Kathy Battista
It’s kind of the magic and curse of being human. We exist in language, in the symbolic, and as such, we can’t escape living in narratives. Charlotte Colbert is a storyteller who crafts visual fairy tales by creating fanciful creatures that shrink or grow in scale. Often focusing on a single bodily element—an eye, a breast, a uterus—Colbert transforms it into a benign embodiment of that anatomical feature. These have taken various forms: a fountain of breasts that becomes a manifestation of a female post-human creature; a blue eye with exaggerated eyelashes transmogrified into various forms, including a protective amulet; a uterus that is almost floral in its iteration and exists in glass, ceramic, and neon. Across the artist’s projects in a variety of media, playfulness is paramount. While her work addresses serious topics—the autonomy of female and trans bodies, the importance of hope in a time of division, the power of belief in healing—Colbert does so without censure or didacticism.
A Book with contributions by Nicoletta Lambertucci, Katie Tobin, Gabriella Nugent, Ruth Millington, Lee Sharrock, Jareh Das, Kathy Battista, Lavinia Filippi, and Helen Barrett
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