My pictorial work forms part of an ongoing exploration of the female portrait, conceived as a space of transformation, tension and metamorphosis. Through my works, I examine the notions of identity, representation and disappearance in a world saturated with images, where female figures appear at once omnipresent, fragmented and in a state of constant reconfiguration.
The face serves as a recurring anchor point, yet it is never stable or fully legible. It is altered, masked, split or dissolved within the pictorial material. This formal instability reflects a broader inquiry into contemporary identity, shaped by digital flows and mechanisms of projection. My figures thus elude any fixed definition: they become zones of transition, forms in transformation.
The mask occupies a central place in this process. Initially narrative, sometimes animal or hybrid, it has gradually become integrated into the painting itself, becoming gesture, material and layer. It no longer merely covers the image: it disrupts it, recomposes it and opens it up to other interpretations. Somewhere between a screen and an apparition, it introduces a constant tension between what is revealed and what is concealed.
My work thus explores painting as a sensitive surface, akin to skin. A membrane upon which the traces of gesture, time and material are imprinted. Skin becomes a central motif here: both a boundary and an interface, it embodies the tension between interior and exterior, visibility and concealment, protection and vulnerability.
Resin, recently introduced into my work, accentuates this dimension of metamorphosis. Through its reflective quality and its ability to capture the environment, it acts as an additional skin, a shifting mirror that draws the viewer into the work. It extends the painting into real space and reinforces the idea of an image that is never complete, always in the making.
The female figure thus becomes a field of experimentation: both subject and medium of transformation, she embodies the issues of visibility, desire and projection. She occupies a liminal space, where the image is never definitive but always in the process of being made, unmade and remade.
Nathalie Pirotte is a Belgian painter who lives and works in Brussels. Exploring the hybridisation of commercial and popular imagery drawn from the mass media, her works employ a ‘cut-and-paste’ aesthetic to construct contemporary portraits. The result is a narrative pictorial practice, subtly imbued with dreamlike, erotic landscapes. The pictorial masks and collage elements reveal the tension between the viewer and the subject — between seeing and being seen.
This is not merely a quest for identity, but also a reflection on the medium of painting in the age of AI. Oscillating between surrealism, pop culture and mythology, her work raises questions about the seductive power of painting. What do we choose to conceal or reveal of the body, particularly in portraiture, in this post-digital age shaped by the web, video art, performance art, selfies and pornographic webcams? The boundaries between public and private life have become increasingly blurred. These works blend intimacy with hyper-mediatised production, abstraction with figuration, gestural impasto with an almost watercolour-like transparency. Thick, symbolic painterly gestures — pink or black impasto — act as expressive masks on surfaces that remain deliberately light and ethereal.
Since completing her studies at the Parsons School of Design in New York and at ENSAV La Cambre, she has held numerous solo exhibitions in Luxembourg, Munich, Cologne and Brussels. Her work has been featured in countless group exhibitions and international art fairs, and is held in numerous museums and private collections.