Artist: Lili Reynaud-Dewar
Exhibition title: My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class)
Venue: Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome, Rome, Italy
Date: April 14 – May 20, 2017
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome is pleased to present My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), a solo show by Lili Reynaud-Dewar.
This installation of works was first shown at Audain Gallery, Vancouver in 2015, then at Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland and at Museo El Eco, Mexico in 2017. The presented project follows the project My Epidemic (small modest bad blood opera) that Lili Reynaud-Dewar produced for All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. They are both part of the more global project “My Epidemic” – an iteration of artworks, texts, seminars and exhibitions in which she quotes and edits numerous texts influenced by AIDS and its impact on bodies and culture. This body of work performs the virality of artistic, intellectual and social life, by circulating between discourses of epidemiology, collective action, artistic production and identity formation.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar uses a range of media such as textiles, sculpture, text, performance and video to create environments in which she examines how gestures of vulnerability and concealment catalyse both exploitation and empowerment. Her practice considers the historical, social and economic construction of the institutions she produces in and her works expose how these spaces privately and publicly codify bodies and experiences. Reynaud-Dewar works towards mutability, circulation and synthesis through performing her own personal history alongside the legacies of transgressive cultural figures of the twentieth century, such as Cosey Fanni Tutti, Josephine Baker and Guillaume Dustan.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar (*1975) is a French artist who lives and works in Grenoble. She has recently presented solo exhibitions at Museion Bozen; Kunstverein Hamburg; SALTS, Basel; K11, Shanghai; CAM Saint-Louis; New Museum, New York; Index, Stockholm; Outpost, Norwich; Kunsthalle Basel; and participated in the 11th Gwangju Biennale, 56th Biennale di Venezia, 12th Lyon Biennial, the 2012 La Triennale, and the 5th Berlin Biennial. Since 2010 she has held a professorship at Haute École d’Art et Design in Geneva.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2015, HD Video, Still
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2015, fabric, paint, ink, 135 x 400 cm each
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2015, mannequin, stand, plant, 35 x 25 x 170 cm
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2015, fabric, paint, ink, 135 x 400 cm each, custom made bean bags, books
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Installation view, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Performance, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Performance, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Performance, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Performance, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Performance, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, My Epidemic (Teaching Bjarne Melgaard’s Class), 2017, Performance, Galerie Emanuel Layr Rome
