Jacqueline H-Botquelen

The camera scura, serves both as method and metaphor in this series, in literally obscuring and abstracting forms, while also making a statement about the nature of memory and perception. Exploring the contrast between light and shadow, presence and absence, using abstraction to evoke the ghosts of memory, much like the camera scura creates a ghostly projection of the outside world. The tight boundaries between humanity, biodiversity, and the universe creates a space were resilience, interconnectedness, and cosmic forces come together.

These concepts, when viewed through the lenses of the camera scura, offer a multi-layered reflection on perception, survival, and the impossible journey through trauma—whether individual, collective, or planetary. This interconnected vision offers endless possibilities for exploring how life, nature, and the cosmos mirrors each other in cycles of creation, destruction, and resilience. Exploring specific ways to bring this cosmic interconnectedness into an abstract visual language, who also delve into more concrete visual or poetic strategies for expressing these ideas.

These boundaries are perhaps illusionary, much like the way light and shadow in the camera scura distort and bend the familiar into the unfamiliar. Just as shadows blur the edges of a form,  the reflections suggest that the human experience is not separate from the natural world or the cosmic forces that shape existence.

Human emotions, such as resilience, suffering, and hope, are tied to the same forces that govern the biological cycles of life and death in the natural world, and the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction in the universe. These are all part of the same narrative.

Integrating PENTIMENTI and SHADOWS in the CAMERA SCURA SERIES, creates a space were the past, present, and the unseen are in dialogue. Pentimenti shows us that even when something seems covered or forgotten, it is still there, influencing the present. Shadows, on the other hand, remind us of what we can't fully see, the areas of life or memory.

Watching but not being able to see through. One that imbues the most fragile features of these works with an oppressive timelessness. To convey the fraction of a second when you are confronted with a maelstrom of primal emotions, before you become aware of them.

This series began when our world was shut down by a virus called Covid. Eyes became an obsession and awakened in me the forgotten memories of my childhood. 

It is a dialogue between figurative work on self-made paper laid on canvas and abstract creation, with glass sculptures on paper, fused in sand, 2 different techniques for the same theme. The previous moment, frozen and ephemeral, the human emotion it contains or the creation of a galaxy.

"Jacqueline H-Botquelen, oscillates between reflexive opacity and transitive transparency, an unreasoning narrative space where materials and mediums communicate in aesthetic coherence and unexpected alterity."  Veronica CUOMO

In the Primeval II series, the bold colours invite a discourse on what lies behind or beneath the surface of each individual. How do we deal with the unspeakable? Pierce the dark matter? Struggle to pass through the "event horizon" and overcome the emotional numbness in order to be alive again?

For Charles Baudelaire, the work of the poet is to transcend Evil to find “Beauty”, as he wrote in his book “The Flower of evil” (“Les fleurs du mal”), thinking that we can only achieve it, through the state of mind called spleen, which is death and destruction.

Jacqueline H-Botquelen takes us into an inner world where our primal being is built to survive, open to a state of resilience, seeding hope and beauty in its path.

"Melancholy is the glorious companion of beauty; it is so good that I cannot conceive of any beauty that does not carry its sadness within it."