alid ex alio clarescet or save Giulia from what she has started and cannot stop

In her recent series of works Annabel looks at Giulia, the daughter and only heir of the Emperor Augustus, who was exiled to the island of Ventotene in 2 A.D. for immoral behavior. Historical elements, whether archeological artefacts, objective accounts, and ancient or modern fictive embellishments (which irreversibly color the cold hard facts), are recomposed in narrative collages/pastiches, which question the construction of historical narrative and the ambiguity and subjectivity of information in general. The gentle and sweet images bring irony and empathy to the strange mix of beauty and cruelty which follows the path of history from antiquity to today.

SAVE GIULIA from her overbearing realatives, from having too good a time, from her wanton behavior, from her carelessness, from her ambitious lovers, from her arranged marriages, from her vanity, from slander, from what she has started and cannot stop.
In this watercolor collage Giulia is trasformed into a historical pastiche, holding in each of her five arms one of her terrible descendents. The fragments of her bloody dynasty are pieced together in a historical narrative in which she becomes the monster.