Behind round glasses, a calm and serious gaze. The face is set in red, orange and yellow over torn posters, with the remains of event notices still visible at the edges. The portrait shows the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. It is one of the pictures in which BTOY places women who have moved history at the centre.
Women who move history
In The dispossessed we present portraits of women whose lives took exceptional paths: thinkers, activists, feminists. Alongside Anna Politkovskaya, who reported on the war in Chechnya and was murdered in Moscow in 2006, BTOY paints the French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex (1949) is one of the founding texts of feminism. Her portrait is titled Art is an attempt to integrate evil, after a line by the philosopher.
They are joined by Angela Davis, philosopher and one of the best-known voices of the black civil rights movement in the United States, Helena Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, and Petra Kelly, peace activist and co-founder of the German Green Party.
The title can be read as “those who have been deprived of what was theirs”.
People who take risks
One of the pictures shows a demonstration. Masked people dressed in black march down a street carrying red-and-black flags, the emblem of the anarchists. On the left-hand edge, a sign points to “Angel” and “Bank”, two stations in London. The picture refers to the Occupy movement and the Spanish Indignados, who protested in 2011 against the consequences of the financial crisis. It shows people who risk their safety, and sometimes their lives, for a cause.
Stencil, screen print and billboard
BTOY works in a mixed technique of stencil, screen print, spray paint and painting. Her grounds are often scraps of billboards: torn advertisements, event posters, stars and lettering that show through the portraits. Over these she sets the faces in strong areas of colour, red, orange, yellow and deep blue. In this way the pictures carry the traces of the street into the gallery.
About the artist
BTOY is the artist Andrea Michaelsson, born in Barcelona in 1977. She studied photography at the Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya. Photography remains the basis of her work, as her stencils are made from photographic sources. In 2002 she began working on the streets of Barcelona, initially as a duo with Ilià Mayer under the name BTOY. Female figures from past decades shape her work, inspired by old posters and by Andy Warhol. In 2008 she took part in the Cans Festival in London, organised by Banksy. BTOY is regarded as one of the best-known women artists in urban art.
2013 begins with a full calendar for BTOY. In January her pictures were shown in exhibitions in Paris and Barcelona. In February her path leads via Venice and the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn to Düsseldorf. In Bonn the subject is Cleopatra, whom BTOY also sees as a strong woman. At the vernissage she will also present a book on her work, published this year.
“The dispossessed”
BTOY
Vernissage: Friday, 22 February 2013, from 7 pm
Exhibition: 22 February – 15 March 2013
The artist will be present.
Pretty Portal, Brunnenstraße 12, 40223 Düsseldorf
