Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a Cuban mother and Argentinean father, Cristina Barr left Argentina and her career as an English Literature teacher to come to Paris in 2001 (currently living between the two cities). She is a painter known for her bold and intense pieces that intertwine the private and the public – the intimate and the political, combining autobiographical elements with stories from literature, and observations on the contemporary world. She uses colour and heavy brushstrokes to create unsettling tableaux which, at times, challenge the social and sexual codes still present  mainly in Latin American societies. Charged with a unique psychic and emotional drama, her works, always inhabited by a strong female presence, express what it is to be a woman, particularly one living under the oppressive hierarchies and controlling conventions of patriarchal society.