Images that seem familiar at first, before revealing something elusive. Bodies, faces, gestures whose meaning remains uncertain. Agnès Guillaume’s videos unsettle our perceptions and challenge our instinctive interpretations, opening up a space between what we see and what we believe we understand.

Trained as a musician, she turned to video art in 2010 and has since developed a distinctive visual language in which composition, framing, colour and action shape painterly and often enigmatic images. The soundtracks, which she composes herself, follow their own score, independent of the images, creating a further disjunction between what is seen and what is heard.

Since 2017, embroidery has held an important place in her practice. Working with needle and thread, she extends her drawings, whose apparent simplicity contrasts with the complexity of their subjects, ranging from intimate formats to large-scale male nudes. The thread becomes an extension of the drawn line, lending it a renewed presence and materiality. Her practice also includes works on paper derived from her videos.

Across these different media, Agnès Guillaume explores the areas of uncertainty that permeate our consciousness, where meaning resists any immediate or singular interpretation.

Born in Leuven in 1962, she lives and works between Brussels and Paris. Her work has been presented in numerous exhibitions in Belgium and internationally, and is held in public and private collections.

“In her videos, as well as in her embroideries, Agnès Guillaume speaks only of us, humans. Not an abstract, transcendent, invented humanity, giving substance to an idealised conception of our condition. Humans who are all too human, in Nietzsche’s phrase.” Paul Ardenne

“In the age of speed, the permanent state of acceleration that we live in, this type of visual endeavour nails its colours to the mast: art is an idiom that demands and deserves attention.” Paul Ardenne

“Passers-by, take a good look in my mirror.” Marie-Laure de Cazotte

“Past, present and future watch over each other, deploying their infinitely delicate treasures; comforting and reassuring each other; exchanging a gladness joy that alone must survive.” Victor Hundsbuckler

“Video art is to short films what poetry is to novels: narrative gives way to the visionary” Christophe Leribault