On Thursday, 28. November, 2024, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, in cooperation with the Embassy of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is offering an exclusive “Visite guidée” through the exhibition with the artist. The Berlin-based French journalist Cécile Calla will lead an artist talk with Laurianne Bixhain, and over an aperitif there will be the opportunity to view the exhibited works individually and exchange ideas with the artist.
Image above: Foto: Galya Feierman.
The exhibition “tout geste est renversement” by Laurianne Bixhain (lives and works in Luxembourg) invites visitors into a multi-layered assemblage: a series of photographs that seem to float in cool aluminum frames, text fragments and a vibrating steel plate from which overlapping voices emerge. These elements gradually combine to form a fabric of motifs that allow image, word and sound to flow into one another. The sonic level is expanded by a composition by vocalist Stine Janvin, who transforms a text into a three-part vocal structure. The sound becomes an echo of the images and texts – a further link that connects all the elements in the exhibition.
Central to the exhibition is a large-format portrait in toxic yellow tones showing a young woman performing a delicate hand movement. This snapshot comes from the dance performance “Shadow Text” by Chloe Chignell and Amina Szecsödy, inspired by the novel “Les Guérillères” (1969) by Monique Wittig. The special feature of the novel is the use of the French personal pronoun “elles” (German: “they”) as a stylistic device to depict the feminist utopia of an autonomous community of female beings. The black and white contrast of the negative is translated into a yellow and gold color scheme. The reversal creates the impression that the dancer is wearing a mask. In this picture, the artist initiates a discourse on the social standardization of binary identity models, reverses them in the spirit of the literary model and transforms them into an open narrative.
Information about the participants
Laurianne Bixhain, born in Wiltz/Luxembourg, is a fellow of the Arts Councils Luxembourg Kultur|lx and a participant in the International Studio Program at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. She holds a BA and an MFA from the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts and completed a master class in photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. Laurianne Bixhain has been awarded numerous scholarships and her work has been exhibited in Luxembourg, Brussels, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Istanbul and Montréal.
Bixhain’s work challenges the common notion of cause and effect between industrial production and human behavior and reverses this relationship: Just as tools shape an object, the finished product in turn influences the shape and use of the tool. Nor is language merely an expression of the body – it shapes and forms it at the same time. In this sense, every movement, every process is a mutual influence, a reciprocal change, a constant interplay of action and reaction. “tout geste est renversement”, or ‘every gesture is reversal’ – a principle that runs through Bixhain’s works as a poetic expression of transformation and exchange.
Cécile Calla, born in Paris, is a freelance journalist and author based in Berlin. She writes for German and French-language media, including ZEIT Online, produces the German-French podcast “Medusa spricht” (https://www.podcast-medusa.com) and is a member of the network of French-language authors in Berlin. She was previously editor-in-chief of the Franco-German magazine ParisBerlin and correspondent for the daily newspaper Le Monde. She was awarded the Franco-German Parliamentary Prize for her book “Que reste-t-il du couple franco-allemand?”.
WHEN?
Thursday, 28. November 2024, 6 – 8 pm
WHERE?
Künstlerhaus Bethanien
Kottbusser Straße 10
10999 Berlin
