Johanna Franco Zapata (’85) was born in Colombia and has been living on Curaçao since 1993. She started her preparatory course at the Instituto Buena Bista (IBB) in 2006. Johanna then studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld academy till 2012 and has been working with the IBB since 2014 as a student advisor and artist.
Her work is concerned with the western concepts of value and their history, like the color of the skin, and how these perceptions have affected our society till this day. The same can be said about the island’s perspective on what is art or can be valued as art. In a place where realism/figurative works are celebrated, she explores the value and autonomy of her works through abstraction. She does so by means of creating compositions where geometrical shapes and color play a mayor role. Although her main medium is painting, Johanna also explores the perception of value through sculpture and performances. Her hard edged paintings and murals can be seen on Curaçao in the inner city of Willemstad and elsewhere.
