In Switzerland the Muzeum Susch offers one of the most important solo exhibitions of Evelyne Axell outside her native Belgium for almost a decade.
Evelyne Axell: Body Double
1 August – 31 May 2021
Thursday to Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm.
A bit of a provocation for an artist considered by art historians as “proto-feminist”, the exhibition “Evelyne Axell: Body Double” is organised in a former 12th century monastery superbly renovated by the Polish patron Grażyna Kulczyk. Located in a small village of 200 inhabitants, the Muzeum Susch won the Swiss Building of the Year 2019 award thanks to its architecture that is both bold and respectful.
The exhibition brings together some sixty works, some of which are unpublished and others which have not been accessible to the public for a very long time and come from collections in New York, Toronto, London, Warsaw or Paris, as well as photographic documents, film extracts and projects spread over a dozen rooms, a layout particularly well suited to a visit in complete safety.
For the curators Anke Kempkes, art historian and art critic, and Krzysztof Kościuczuk, artistic director of the Muzeum Susch, Evelyne Axell, who was a pupil of René Magritte, filtered the contemporary vocabulary of Pop Art through a personal reading of Surrealism.
The exhibition “Body Double” takes up the – almost obsessively recurring – motif of the “double” in Evelyne Axell’s compositions. These range from identical and idealised female nudes, engaged in dialogue, taken on the spot as in a Greek frieze, or resembling the guardians of a gate leading to unexplored territory, to double self-portraits of twin women absorbed in an embrace or a kiss.
The only distinguishing feature is the colour of their skin – black and white – which resonates with an experimental film of the same title that she directed in 1967, as well as the film for which she wrote the screenplay and was the main actress, “Le crocodile en peluche” (1963), which tells the story of the setbacks of a mixed Belgian-Congolese couple shortly after decolonisation. Excerpts from these films are presented in the exhibition, which also focuses on Evelyne Axell’s commitment to civil rights in the USA, equality between blacks and whites, men and women, the struggle of young people against the war (during the Vietnam era) and the protection of nature and the environment. Unfortunately, these themes are still relevant today, almost fifty years after her death.
Muzeum Susch
Surpunt 78
CH-7542 Susch
Telephone : +41 (0)81 861 03 03
E-mail : info@muzeumsusch.ch
Web : https://www.muzeumsusch.ch
