Bianca Batlle-Nguema was born in Barcelona in 1980, the daughter of a father from Barcelona and a mother from Guinea.
She was already passionate about drawing and painting as a child, and she stayed long hours at home to her artistic hobby. This passion led her, after finishing secondary school, to undertake studies at the Eina School in Barcelona, a university centre for Design and Art. There she came into contact with teachers who had a powerful influence on her, such as Xano Armenter, Jordi Fulla, Manel Esclusa and Francesc Artigau. Later, she continued her training at the DaVinci School of Art, also located in Barcelona, where she delved deeper into anatomy, drawing, painting and modelling and where she also connected with outstanding teachers, such as Pere Cara and Lola Ballbé. It was during this time that she participated in her first individual and collective exhibitions, in which she achieved notable sales success. Her training was later expanded through internships in workshops of different artists in the south of Spain and in Portugal, and through these experiences, Bianca came into contact with the world of ceramics and material paintings.
When she returned to Barcelona at the age of 22, she met her current husband, with whom she would have three children. Over the following years, her attention focused on her family project, although she continued to paint. It was in 2010, with the death of her mother, that she began a process of searching for her African roots through art. The awareness of being an Afro-descendant woman in Spain, without social and artistic references with which to identify, became the great driving force in her search for her own identity and the path to self-discovery. For Bianca, from that moment on, painting black women became a kind of obsession and was the great central theme of all her work. She herself says: “When I paint a black woman, I see myself.”
In 2010, a turning point came and Bianca decided to make a living out of art. For several years now, she has incorporated performance art as a form of artistic expression into her project, performing at festivals such as FEM! at the Centre for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona (CCCB) or Conciencia Afro at the Matadero-Madrid Centre for Contemporary Creation, collaborating with musicians such as Gemma Abrié, Bandabòlid and Maio de Sal, or in poetic performances with Elvira Fabregat.
Bianca works in a bright studio – a two-storey, 150-square-metre former industrial warehouse – located in the centre of Tiana, a small wine-growing town 10 minutes from Barcelona, where she lives. In this space she dedicates her professional time to giving free rein to the creation of her own work in an atmosphere of tranquillity, creativity and movement.
Always in constant search of her own human, artistic and professional development – for her, the three concepts go hand in hand – Bianca manages her project autonomously. She disseminates and markets her work directly through her website and her powerful social media profiles, which have tens of thousands of followers around the world. Social media has been, precisely, her vehicle of transmission to the general public and to events, exhibitions and a more than notable media echo. In recent times Bianca has been present at artistic events in places as far away as Barcelona, Geneva, Madrid, New York or Cape Town. And she has recently been awarded the Minority Artist Award by the United Nations.
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