Bal de tête is a dark and poetic artist book by Chloé Poizat. In a sequence of small, intricately drawn illustrations, she invites us into a ghostly interspace: children sprout from trees, heads dissolve into smoke, bodies appear mutilated and decapitated.
These beings—half-human, half-beast, half-comedy, half-trauma—seem banished from collective memory. Poizat constructs a visual cabinet of curiosities that evokes Odilon Redon, Gourmelin, or Virgil Finlay—with Lautréamont’s shadow always close by.
A book like a silent nightmare, wordless yet full of meaning—for those who find beauty in the grotesque.
Chloé Poizat is a French artist and illustrator known for her radically personal visual language that blends surrealism, grotesque, and psychological intensity. Her work appears in exhibitions, art books, theatre design, and publications.
She lives and works in Paris.