Aline Bouvy (1974, Brussels) lives and works in Brussels and Luxembourg. She studied at the Ecole de Recherche Graphique in Brussels and at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht. The sculptures, objects and installations that originate from her practice are difficult to pin down. Bouvy does not restrict herself to a routine use of defined ‘disciplines’ and techniques, but explores both the limitations and the possibilities of the most diverse media. More precisely, she picks out shapes, words, colors and symbols, pulls them from their context and combines them into a new discourse – an archetypal and at the same time highly personal chain of associations. The layers of meaning are shifted over and into each other, often even literally.

With a critical eye, Bouvy analyzes society in all its dialectical tug of war: debauchery and decency, concealment and publicity, desire and obligation. Recognizable forms such as fertility symbols, utensils and limbs, but also colors and specific materials such as charcoal, linoleum or plexiglass, are given an aesthetic or moral dimension. Every motif in her work is like a double-edged knife. An invisible force seems to decide for us which subjects end up in a taboo and die a silent death: sexuality, physicality, decay, waste, violence. Yet these are elements that today permeate our visually obsessed mass culture. Western society seems to be lulling itself asleep on an illusionary sea of selfies and empty images, in stark contrast to what is really happening in the world.

Melanie Deboutte