Currently in progress: Colin and Nayirah

Jean-Baptiste Maitre is currently developing a series of paintings that revisit and renew the genre of history painting, depicting key media moments from the late 20th and early 21st centuries—such as Colin Powell’s 2003 UN address and Nayirah al-Sabah’s testimony preceding the Gulf War—set against scenes drawn from personal memory. The project is examining how contemporary events turns into personal history.

This Person Does Not Exist, 40 x 50 cm, Oil On linen, 2025
The image is based on a face generated by the website ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com — meaning the person depicted has never existed and will never appear again in exactly this form. The painting becomes the only physical trace of a non-existent individual, a kind of portrait without a subject.

I’m interested in how painting, which historically anchors memory and identity, can now also give presence to someone who has no history, no biography, no life. It shifts the role of portraiture from representing a real person to calling someone into being. The uniqueness lies not in likeness, but in the act of giving them a body through paint.