Carmen Schabracq (1988, Amsterdam) is a visual artist working in various media including sculptural installations, textile, painting, performances, costumes and masks. She studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, after a year of painting studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome. Later, she obtained a Master’s degree in theatre costume design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. In 2015 Carmen followed a masterclass by Romeo Castellucci at the Biennale del Teatro di Venezia. In the 2017-18 season, she received the ‘new makers subsidy’ from the Performing Arts Fund NL, with which she made two site specific performances in Zeeland. She has previously been an artist in residence at Casa Lü in Mexico City, Vincent van Gogh Huis in Zundert, ARV.I in Bulgaria, Kunsthuis SYB in Beetsterzwaag and at BijmAIR in Amsterdam South-east. In 2019 she made The Seamouth an interactive sculpture to listen to the voice of the North Sea, commissioned by the Embassy of the North Sea. The Seamouth is a traveling sculpture and has been shown at many art events, such as the Ferry Festival on the IJ, on Oerol, on the beach of Scheveningen and in the Hem. She worked with theatre companies such as Dood Paard, Stichting Like Minds, Rosa Ensemble, Zeeland Nazomer Festival, Zuidpool and collaborated with director Lisenka Heijboer Castañón for the opera Vrouwenstemmen at the Amsterdam Grachtenfestival and she did the costume and mask design for the Dutch National Opera production I have missed you forever which had it’s premiere at the Opera Forward Festival 2022. In 2024 she will design the costumes for the opera production The Gospel according to the other Mary at the Volksoper in Vienna.
Carmens work was and will to be seen in exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum Breda, Galerie Fleur en Wouter, CBK Zuidoost, Museum Tot Zover, Nest Ruimte, No limits! Art Castle, the Vincent Van Gogh Huis and Kunsthuis SYB. The mask is a recurring object and theme within her work. She’s interested in how you can become ‘the other’ with a mask, and all the different shapes masks can take throughout ancient and modern (sub-)cultures through the whole world.