Les lèvres rouges
15.02. - 05.07.2020
Kunstverein Bielefeld
Welle 61, Bielefeld
Welle 61, Bielefeld
The
Kunstverein Bielefeld is delighted to present Les lèvres rouges, the first
institutional solo
exhibition
in Germany by the French artist Julie Béna. The objects, installations, films
and
performances
created by Béna address the forms of representation inherent to cultural
narratives.
Her works juxtapose motifs from art-historical, theatrical and literary contexts
with
those
from mass media and popular entertainment, in order to interrogate the social
determinants
of the production and reception of the material. Her Bielefeld exhibition opens
up
a space of play in which illusion and reality are taken to the point of
indistinguishability. In
the
midst of this enchantment, the spectator becomes all the more aware of societal
power
relations.
Working
across both levels of the Kunstverein exhibition space, Béna develops a
scenario
populated
by spiders, mice, fools, butterflies and flying phalluses, in an installation
which
ultimately
has symbolic significance. Resisting the unequivocal, the piece works around
the
specifications
of the exhibition space, undermining its supposed functionality. Here, the
materiality
of hand-made lacework collides with the technological nature of 3D-printed
objects,
while digital animated films are confronted traditional puppet theater. Béna’s
field of
reference
extends to pilgrim badges, among the earliest of visual mass media, and to
panorama
pictures, an early technology of popular art. Les lèvres rouges subverts fixed
cultural
definitions in order to imagine a different world calling dominant norms and
meanings
into
question.
Julie
Béna (born in Paris in 1982, lives and works in in Paris and Prague) has had
recent
solo
exhibitions at Kunstraum London (2020), Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, the Jeu
de
Paume
Paris, CAPC Bordeaux and the Galerie Joseph Tang, Paris (all in 2019). Her work
has
been included in group exhibitions at L’Inconnue, Montreal, Drdova Galerie,
Prague, the
C
Arte C, Madrid (all in 2019), BOZAR, Brussels, RUPERT, Vilnius, Chapter New
York (all in
2018)
and at M Leuven, Belgium (2017). In 2018, she participated in the Rennes
Biennale.