Focus on Portraiture: Andrea Torres-Balaguer: The Unknown

Focus on Portraiture: Andrea Torres-Balaguer: The Unknown by Carlos BarradasJanuary 26, 2021

©Andrea Torres-Balaguer, “The Unknown”

Andrea Torres Balaguer’s work is influenced by dreams and surrealism, exploring the relationship between femininity and nature through the symbolism and dream transcription technique. Inspired by references to psychoanalysis theory and magic realism, her pictures experiment with the conscious-subconscious. Thinking about the scene-action concept, she creates pictures that suggest stories and invites the spectator to interpret them, searching to experiment with the boundaries between reality and fiction.

©Andrea Torres-Balaguer, “The Unknown”

Andrea Torres Balaguer (Barcelona, 1990) is graduated in Fine Arts by University of Barcelona. After winning the first award of Artevistas New Talents her work has been exhibited in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, New York, London, Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam, Miami, Mexico and many Art Fairs in Europe. Her work has been included in private collections like Fundació Vila Casas, Col·lecció Bassat and Universitat de Barcelona and it has been featured in some popular magazines like Elle France, Marie Claire France and Italy, AD Magazine, Nuevo Estilo, Fubiz, Lamono, Ignant mag and Worbz. In 2015 she was selected as a Commended Photographer for the Sony World Photography Awards, Enhanced category.

In 2018 she was selected to be a part of Elles x Paris Photo curated by Fannie Escoulen, dedicated to woman in the history of photography who were hidden from the Museums. She was also the youngest female to have a solo show in the Museum of Montserrat, a prestigious Museum in her born country, Catalonia.

She has been recently selected as one of the “top 5 artists to invest” in Art Madrid 2019. In 2020 she exhibited in a solo show called Inside the Unknown, placed in Can Mario Fundació Vilacasas, where the audience could see a path since her first work Hypnagogia until her last collage series Eclipses. She was also selected for being the image of Art Paris 2020 in Artsy on May 2020. Her inspiration photographers are Duane Michals, Sally Mann and Annie Leibovitz.

©Andrea Torres-Balaguer, “The Unknown”

©Andrea Torres-Balaguer, “The Unknown”

The Unknown

Following her previous work (Moon) where the characters hide their faces voluntarily to make them whoever you imagine, Andrea take away the identity of the character by conceal their faces. “It seemed a bit aggressive to me, specially because was me “brushstrokeing” their faces, stealing their identity. For that reason I decided to do it to myself by taking self-portraits. And it has a new sense: I strip myself of my identity, but I can be whoever the spectators want. I have a lot of possible new identities except my original”. “The Unknown” is about the identity concept and the importance of it when we are talking about a portrait.