About Me
Multidisciplinary artist Linet Andrea discovered the contemporary circus during her BA at Chelsea College of Art in the early 90s.
She began a parallel life of both trapeze training and art-making during her degree in Sculpture & Multimedia, for which she earned 1st class honors.
Linet felt that contemporary art needed the real danger, truth, dynamism and humanity that the circus had to offer. She left London to immerse herself in aerial training, and was admitted to the National Circus School of France (CNAC) completing her diploma at the age of 27.
Linet continued her career touring internationally into the late 90's with the companies Archaos and Cahin Caha, and started drawing and painting consistently.
In addition to performing, she exhibited her artwork on tour and quickly attracted collectors to the particularity of her charcoal lines and figurative themes of live performance.
In 2000, Linet settled in Burgundy, France and founded both a family and a gallery space, Angström. She curated exhibitions and events mainly around her own paintings and drawings, still primarily based on circus, but also in collaboration with other artists, designers and performers.
Linet has exhibited internationally in renowned spaces such as the Yerba Buena Centre, San Francisco, USA; Sapporo Art Park, Japan; La Villette, Paris, France among others and has created numerous private and public commissions, including 14 stations of the Cross for the Heritage Foundation of France.
Linet Andrea works in her Burgundy studio and places gestural freedom at the heart of her artistic process.
An exhibition "Dreaming Mutiny" was held in 2022 on the theme of sexuality and female emancipation.
Liberation from various forms of oppression is the main theme of her current work.
EXPERIENCE
Exhibitions
1999 - 2021
- I have exhibited in various countries including the United States, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and France, created a fourteen part Stations of the Cross for the Heritage Foundation in France, and recently participated in an artist residency in Meknès Morocco with the French Institution.
Currently exhibiting at the Gallery Philippe Decorde in Strasbourg, France.
Stage
1992 - 2002
- I worked in theaters, on stage and in circus tents between Vietnam and San Francisco in several circus companies.
Education
1989 - 1992
Chelsea School of Art (London) | BA Honors in Fine Arts | sculpture, video, experimental music, installation.
1994 - 1997
National Center for Circus Arts (France) | Graduate | Trapeze / Pendulum (my own invention), vocals and video.
ARTISTS STATEMENT
Intuitive charcoal drawings and paintings are always the starting point of my work.
My technique is so eruptive that sometimes I don’t even look as my fingers scrape and scratch at
the surface, issuing lines like black veins and lightning bolts of charcoal. The marks escape with their own velocity. I try not to arrest the movement, so the traces remain viscerally powerful.
I work on wooden surfaces with charcoal and paint, and on cotton and watercolor paper with pencil and inks.
Constant experimentation brings me closer to the unknown images I seek to reveal and the shock of creating forms from “nowhere” stirs up deeply rooted emotions.
My recent work reflects this choice with repeated female forms in either threatened or threatening positions.
Sometimes the forms jump or explode into the pictorial space. These pieces are responses to my inner life, expulsions of my relationship to society, forms of oppression and sexuality.
My work also conveys empowerment through the creative process.
ARTICLES