Born in 1993, Barbara Bessac is a French artist, author, researcher and teacher based in London. She practices painting, drawing and writing alongside her academic activities in art history research and teaching.

 

She paints intimate settings, lived or imagined, deserted yet inhabited, where absence and the imprint of bodies are revealed. Through text, painting, drawing, and photography, her images form an atlas of contemporary domestic decor. She also explores the survival of images, particularly the relationship between her paintings and photography. Finally, she dedicates herself to writing the history of fictional interiors, and that of maids' rooms and the projection of these spaces into the collective imagination.

 

Since completing her PhD in Art History and Theatre Studies in 2022, she has taught visual culture and design history at university (NYU London, University of the Arts London, Ithaca College London Centre, Paris College of Art). She is currently preparing the publication of her first academic book, The Poetics of Props, which traces the history of six objects between the 19th-century theatre and domestic interiors. CV