Giulia Family Portrait Collection

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 follow the path of history from antiquity to today.

Thirteen portraits compose this family portrait wall, a terrible collection of murderers, whores, incests and their unhappy victims. Giulia is both the generator of a damned dynasty as the opening text suggests, “the gods visit the sins of the father upon the children”, and a victim trapped in a succession of blood and crime which begins with the long-reaching ambitions of her father Augustus.