Andrée Chapatte is a transdisciplinary artist, performer, writer and videographer who enjoys mixing high and low art. He mainly works on the periphery of the Belgian contemporary dance scene, where his work includes complex themes, rich visuals and catchy songs. His movement practice is based on a broad range of accessible dance techniques. His recent performances are about the nature of images, our relationship to contemporary camera technologies and speculation on novel forms of masculinities.
↓↓ Continue reading below for Andrée’s extended biography.
→ see Liminal for his work with positive masculinites.
At 9 years old he started drawing cartoon characters while recording his voice into a cheap cassette recorder. Born in Geneva to a mother from the United States and a father from South Africa, Andrée’s small family was shuffled around the world by two immense forces: the Protestant church and the U.S. army. This complicated colonial foundation combined with intense anti-American sentiment during the Bush Jr. years lead to Andrée’s instinctive questioning of the meaning of identity.
His obsession with comic books continued throughout his youth until he moved to study publishing in Amsterdam. After flunking his first semester for being too stubborn, the lightweight industrial building he recently called home suddenly caught fire and burned down, reducing his illustration tools, library and archives to ash. Jumbled and unknowingly suffering from PTSD, Andrée remained dead set on passing his academic year. Six months later he would drop graphic design to join the Audio-Visual Department.
→ extracts of sketchbooks lost in the fire.
→ see the early works (2012-2016) page.
During his time in Amsterdam, Andrée’s favourite nightclub was the legendary queer-punk Frankrijk, where he could often be found on Wednesday nights watching drag shows and drinking cheap beer. Noticing that no one within his cishet entourage of musicians and artists was interested in questioning their gender, Andrée started researching masculinities. He then met Singaporean artist and researcher Wayne Lim, with whom he collaborated for several years.
→ Wayne Lim’s essay On Demasculinization.
→ video of Wayne and Andrée’s The Passage.
Five years after moving to the Benelux, Andrée was combining illustration commissions and performance gigs along with work as a house painter. Dissatisfied with how sedentary and digitalised illustration work had become, he decided to ignore warnings from his mentor Gabriel Lester and relocated to Brussels. Having not taken a dance class since he was 10 years old, Andrée enrolled into the Institut Supérieur d’Art et Chorégraphie (ISAC) where he immersed himself into contemporary dance.
→ see the solo performance Sublime Scum.
→ see the group performance The Dead Pigeon.