Georgette Yvette Ponté: Painting What Often Remains Unspoken

Georgette Yvette Ponté: Painting What Often Remains Unspoken

There are things that are difficult to explain in words. Sometimes they are easier to express through the body, through an image, or through a gesture. This is where much of the work of Croatian artist Georgette Yvette Ponté begins.

Born in Nice, France, in 1983, Ponté has lived in Croatia since childhood. She graduated in Sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2014, but her artistic practice has never been limited to one medium. She works with painting, sculpture, performance and video, choosing the form that best serves the subject she wants to explore.

Women and the female body are recurring subjects in her work. Not as idealised figures, but as women who carry experiences, memories, pressure, vulnerability and strength. Ponté is interested in what society expects from women, what it takes away from them, and how these experiences leave traces on the body.

Her paintings are often large in scale. She frequently works on unprimed canvas, leaving the material exposed rather than hiding it behind a conventional frame. The paintings are not intended to be decorative objects. They have a physical presence and are meant to confront the viewer directly.

This is particularly evident in Trauma – Corporeal Landscapes of Pain, a project in which painting, video and performance come together. The works deal with pain and the ways in which it is experienced, remembered and carried. In the accompanying performance and video, the body is not simply represented; it becomes part of the work itself.

Another important project, Trampled, addresses the position of women in society. Through the use of footprints and traces on a large painted surface, Ponté examines the ways in which women's bodies and identities are exposed to social judgement, pressure and objectification.

Her work does not offer easy answers. She does not try to make difficult subjects comfortable for the viewer. Instead, she creates situations in which people have to stop, look and perhaps reconsider something they have taken for granted.

Over the years, Ponté has presented her work in more than twenty solo exhibitions and over fifty group exhibitions, and has received numerous awards, particularly for painting. She continues to develop projects that move between visual art and performance, often addressing subjects that are personal but also deeply connected to wider social realities.

For Ponté, making art is not about following what is currently popular. It is about having something to say and finding the form that allows her to say it honestly.

Georgette Yvette Ponté

Visual artist | Croatia

MA in Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb

Painting · Sculpture · Performance · Video Art