“There is a brazen intimacy with these self-depictions, but also a sense of remove or alienation. With these works, Tabouret places herself in a lineage of women painters who have produced bravura self-portraiture, including seventeenth-century artists Sofonisba Anguissola, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Judith Leyster. At risk of oversimplification of a complex historical topic, one might say that, while excluded from the use of male models in studio practice, women turned to the most accessible and accommodating sitter: themselves. The result is most disarming, candid – and somehow, turns us, viewers, into the artist: surreptitiously, this act of looking inwards, into ourselves, becomes ours, through an unexplainable act of transfer, Tabouret offers us the means to slip inside her gaze – we gain access to our selves through her gaze.”

—Joachim Pissarro, Bershad Professor of Art History, Director of the Hunter College Art Galleries at Hunter College

Claire Tabouret working on her show L'Urgence et la Patience at Almine Rech, Paris, October 16 to December 18, 2021.