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Joëlle Dubois at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein

February 8, 2023

Artist: Joëlle Dubois

Exhibition title: Future Nostalgia

Venue: NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany

Date: January 21 – March 11, 2023

Photography: Simon Vogel / all images are copyrighted. Courtesy of the artist and NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein is pleased to present Future Nostalgia, the first institutional solo exhibition of artist Joëlle Dubois.

Joëlle Dubois is a precise observer of today’s society. And of herself. The stories her works tell are therefore both universal and personal at the same time. The artist’s paintings are strongly influenced by personal memories and experiences and penetrate into the realms of femininity, fertility, loss and sexuality, which are symbolically inscribed in the images and are waiting to be decoded.

In her works, which are strongly inspired by non-Western art and culture, the Belgian artist also negotiates the absurdities of self-presentation after previous supposed self-optimization of the body, the voyeuristic aspects of digitalization through social media, explicit scenes from the private sphere, strange situations and twists in life, and the peculiar experience of being human in general. Her mostly female protagonists are of multi-ethnic origin and often contradict the common, standardized ideals of beauty. The depiction of the female form fascinates the painter, she longs to standardize the body, to depict body positivity.

Dubois’ works are also skillfully peppered with allusions to art history: quotations from famous works, painters, compositions or styles as well as the iconographic use of symbols are not uncommon. In addition, the artist is committed to today’s zeitgeist, pop cultural references permeate her oeuvre incessantly.

NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein has now succeeded for the first time in bringing together works from all of Dubois’ creative phases at the Kunstverein. The result is not only an overview of the artist’s entire oeuvre, but also a multi-layered exhibition that reveals cross-references within itself and to the outside world, provides new artistic as well as social impulses, and thus makes it unmistakably clear: Joëlle Dubois is currently one of the most important feminist positions in contemporary art.

Joëlle Dubois (*1990 in Ghent, Belgium) studied at the LUCA School of Arts in Ghent. She lives and works in Ghent.

The exhibition will be accompanied in March by the eponymous catalog Future Nostalgia, published by Distanz; this will be presented on site on the occasion of the finissage on March 11, 2023.