Over the past 15 years, Charlotte Bouckaert has been developing a visual language at the intersection of visual art and live performance(s). By staging images as a changing process, she invites her audience to become aware of the impact of their own perception. Her work takes (on) various forms such as shows, installations, performances and videos.
Her theatre practice started in 2012 in Brussels with the performance The photographer left, he told the truth in collaboration with Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek and Beursschouwburg. For this performance, Bouckaert was awarded the Dioraphte Prize at the Festival Cement in the Netherlands.
From 2014 until 2019, Bouckaert was part of the collective Atelier Bildraum, in which she staged several theatre performances; Bildraum, In between violet and Green, and Icon produced by Lod Muziektheater (Gent, Belgium). In 2015, Bildraum won the Big in Belgium Award at Theater aan Zee and the Total Theatre Award in 2016 at the Fringe Festival (Edinburgh).
In 2020, Bouckaert created and toured with her performance 11 seconds where the audience is invited to look at one photograph for 55 minutes. Since 2020 she is working on the topic of still life. She presented her online live performance Still life with Chair and in the Groeninghemuseum in Bruges, she explored the museum as an open studio in front of their still life collection.
In 2024, her upcoming theatre performance You are an Object to me will premiere on 22 and 23 March in KVS.
Whilst in 11 seconds the static image took center stage, in You are an Object to me Bouckaert will challenge everyday banal objects and their starting point of stillness and immobility.
With her multidisciplinary work, Bouckaert wants to question and activate the act of looking: what do we see and what not?
How do we watch and why?
The time of looking, the unexpected and the imagination.
The greatest enemy of looking is that we think that we already know in advance what we are looking at.
Choreografie van het stilstaand beeld - Tamara Beheydt about the work of Charlotte Bouckaert (NL)