Valérie Belin: L'incertaine beauté du monde

The MUba Eugène Leroy (Tourcoing, France) presents 100 photographs by Valérie Belin in a solo exhibition from 17 March - 27 August 2023.  The show is the first to stage such a comprehensive selection of her work, from photographs made in the 1990s to the artist's most recent series, Heroes (2022).

 

Without following a strictly chronological course, the exhibition demonstrates the developments and evolution of Belin's work. From analog to digital, black and white to color, objects to humans, from the organic to the virtual, beings and things are treated as appearances where surface and interiority are isomorphic. Through the different series, the exhibition evidences the artist's prodigious imaginary. Valérie Belin questions the sometimes-complex relationship we have with our bodies and their representations. Her latest series entitled Heroes (2022) thus takes up two oft- represented figures, the clown and the mime, who seek to entertain whilst revealing a truth.

 

Firmly anchored in a reality that shapes us, Valérie Belin's art introduces a disturbance. She plays with the multiple expressive possibilities of photography - black and white, superimposition, chromatic modification, framing, and more - to distance conventional perceptions of the subject.