Annabelle Agbo Godeau

Annabelle Agbo Godeau (b. 1995, Paris, France) is a Düsseldorf-based artist whose practice explores themes of race, identity, and the complexities of representation. Drawing from a diverse range of sources—including cinema, literature, and popular culture—and informed by her mixed heritage (French, German, and Beninese), Agbo Godeau's work examines the intersections of personal and cultural histories, as well as how prescribed narratives and stereotypes shape perceptions of self and others.
Working across painting, works on paper, and installation, Agbo Godeau constructs fragmented narratives that resist resolution, employing visual metaphors such as concealment, revelation, and transformation. Through her layered and meticulous processes, she isolates details from archival materials, film stills, photographs, and found imagery, abstracting them into new contexts and inviting viewers to reconsider their assumptions and associations. This becomes particularly evident when her works on transparent waxed paper are exhibited in installative configurations, where disparate references are brought together to create immersive environments that balance narrative and openness, evoking both specific moments and broader temporal sequences.
Agbo Godeau's highly rendered paintings create an interplay between clarity and obscurity, often positioning subjects in ambiguous states between presence and absence, familiarity and estrangement. Whether depicting a figure in action or an isolated object, her images evoke a sense of movement and multiplicity, encouraging engagement with the underlying histories and all the possible meanings embedded within. Her work also foregrounds the act of making itself, with the layered edges of her canvases or the fragile transparency of waxed paper underscoring the impermanence and slow transformation inherent in her practice.
Annabelle Agbo Godeau (b. 1995, Paris, FR) lives and works between Düsseldorf and Paris. She holds an MFA from the Academie de Beaux-Arts de Paris (2018) and was a guest student of Ellen Gallagher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf until 2021. Recent solo exhibitions include: What have you done with her? (Part 2), Alice Amati, London, UK (2024); What have you done with her? (Part 1), Moltkerei Werkstatt, Cologne, DE (2024); I won‘t dance, don‘t ask me, The island club, Limassol, CY (2023); Too good to be true, JVDW, Düsseldorf, DE (2022) La théorie du cygne noir, La cuisine, Galerie Hussenot, Paris, FR (2022); Die eiserne Hand, Galerie Alexandra Romy, Zurich, CH (2021), amongst others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions internationally at Jack Siebert Projects, Los Angeles (2025), Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve (2024); Setareh X, Düsseldorf (2024); Space n.n., Munich (2024); Kunstverein Düsseldorf (2024); Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Paris, FR (2023); Pal Project, Paris, FR (2022); Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, BE (2022); Museum Haus-Opherdicke, Holzwickede, DE (2022); The Bass Museum, Miami, US (2022); Revelations Emerige, Paris, FR (2021). She received the Roger Bataille Painting Prize in 2019 and is one of the recipients of the 2024-2025 dHCS studio fellowships at Mataré-Haus in Meerbusch. Her work is included in Sammlung Philara (Düsseldorf, Germany) and Fondazione Bonollo Arte Contemporaena (Vicenza, Italy).