A cabaret with a nocturnal electricity, a carnival abounding with popular joy, a talk show with extremes that are as funny as they are caustic, a falsely candid fable, and a nightmarish spin on the fairy tale: these are some of the aesthetic universes that the Magasin CNAC will be conjuring up for its next exhibition devoted to Julie Béna, which has its vernissage on October 3, 2025.
PARODIE is the first major exhibition of Julie Béna’s art in France. Bringing together a significant body of work created between 2015 and the present day, the exhibition at the Magasin CNAC will showcase a decade of extraordinary creativity while tracing the evolution of the French artist’s career.
A vast selection of works will transform the Magasin CNAC into a space inhabited by characters, sometimes imaginary creations and sometimes embodied by Julie Béna herself. They seem to have emerged from evanescent, transient realms. There is the world of the carnival with its burlesque overtones and popular appeal, or the nocturnal world where the unconscious, fantasies, and dreams – often joyfully emancipatory, occasionally verging on the nightmarish – intermingle. The PARODIE exhibition is a mischievous exploration of the uncertain contours of truths that both it disrupts and reinvents. The exhibition exists at the crossroads of the personal and the political as it comes to life around us and within us. The identities and imagined characters that hide behind the masks suggest a form of introspection that the artist embraces with humour, derision, and exaggeration. Cabaret and fairy tales, which are regular inspirations for her imagery, use allegory and hyperbole to express opinions about social or political conditions. In a similar manner, the real and fantastical merge in Julie Béna’s world.
The project will unfold in the art centre’s historic building, its galleries, and its iconic space known as the “Rue” or “Street”. For this project, Julie Béna is responding to the identity and architecture of the building, notably the Rue, the vast interior hall under the glass roof that is highly symbolic of the street as a public space. This becomes all the more relevant in the context of the artist’s work, which has been nourished by her experiences performing for the travelling theatre during her childhood and her profound relationship with performance art. Her creations reveal an intimate side while reflecting on inner personalities and cellular family dynamics. These works also provoke a collision with universal figures that are emblematic of the public sphere and the media universe, such as Shirley Temple.
While the exhibition takes a retrospective look at the artist’s career as it considers almost ten years of Julie Béna’s creative practice, it is also an invitation for her to take ownership of the site and transform its spaces with new works designed specifically for the occasion. This will be the first time that such an extensive and eclectic selection of her art, in all of its diverse scales and different mediums, will be presented to the public.
Julie Béna’s art is inspired by an eclectic mix of influences, including contemporary and ancient literature, art brut and folk art, humour and gravity, and time and parallel spaces. Composed of sculptures, installations, films, and performances, her work often seems to float in an infinite void, unfolding against a fictional backdrop where anything is possible. In recent years, Béna has developed a range of personal cosmologies that feature seemingly mundane characters and objects having enigmatic conversations and interactions with one another. From Pantopon Rose (a character from William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch) to Miss None and Mr. Peanut — a disembodied floating wig and the iconic anthropomorphic peanut sporting a top hat and a monocle — Julie Béna gives her characters a singular agency and voice, defining them by what they are not.
Julie Béna was born in Paris, France, in 1982. She currently lives and works between Prague and Paris. She is a graduate of the Villa Arson in Nice and attended the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 2012-2013, she was part of the Pavillon, the artistic research laboratory at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In 2018, she was nominated for the for the Prix AWARE.
Her work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including: Fantasy , PLATO, Ostrava, CZ (2024); Vitrine, Hermès, Prague, CZ (2024); Sometimes, Polansky Gallery, Prague, CZ (2024); Anna, the Jester and the Monstroplantes, dual exhibition with Anna Hulačová, CEAAC, Strasbourg, FR (2023); Sombre dimanche, Longtermhandstand, Budapest, HU (2022); The Den, NıCOLETTı, London, UK (2021); Miles, Villa Arson, Nice, FR (2021); Artissima, art fair with NıCOLETTı, Torino, IT (2021); The wolf, the princess and the little soldier , Polansky Gallery, Prague, CZ (2020); The Jester and Death, Kunstraum, London, UK (2020); Les Lèvres Rouges, Kunstverein Bielefeld, DE (2020); Anna and the Jester in Window of Opportunity, Jeu de Paume, Paris, FR (2019); Anna and the Jester, CAPC Bordeaux, FR (2019); Anna and the Jester, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, MX (2019); And have you seen Pantopon Rose?, Passerelle, Brest, FR (2017). Julie Béna has also participated in group exhibitions, the most recent of which include: Sequence / Fragment, NıCOLETTı, London, UK (2024); Dormancy Settings, Longtermhandstand Budapest, HU (2024); Jabberwocky, curated by Vittoria Matarrese, Ceysson & Bénétière, Paris, FR (2023); Fragments of Other Knowledge, The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, IS; Recent Acquisitions and Eternal Loves – Part I, Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Monaco, MC; Au bonheur, CEAAC, Strasbourg, FR (2022); Oral Texte, Fondation Pernod Ricard, Paris, FR (2022); Move: Intimacy as Resistance, National Gallery, Prague, CZ (2022); Contre-Nature, MOCO, Montpellier, FR (2022); Hypernuit, submarine base, Bordeaux, FR (2022); Meia-Noite Part 2, Bienal de Coimbra, Coimbra, PT (2022); Sun kissed, Neve, Los Angeles, US (2022); Virtual Body, Quartier am Hafen, Cologne, DE (2021); Les Moyens du bord, organised by the Centre Pompidou, La Villette, Paris, FR (2020). Her work has also been shown at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR, the Biennale de Rennes, FR; the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, FR; the Polansky Gallery, Brno, CZ; 1646, The Hague, NL; c arte c, Madrid, ES; Bozar, Brussels, BE; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris and San Francisco; Protocinema, Istanbul, TR, and Chapter NY, New York, US. Julie Béna has given numerous performances, notably at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, FR; the ICA, London, UK; M, Leuven, BE; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR; and Performa, NY, US.
