Artist: Lili Reynaud-Dewar
Exhibition title: Hello, my name is Lili and we are many
Curated by: François Piron
Venue: Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France
Date: October 19, 2023 – January 7, 2024
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist, ©Palais de Tokyo and the respective copyright holders
Lili Reynaud-Dewar films, writes, speaks, dances, teaches, investigates, works with her friends, her family, her students. At the Palais de Tokyo, she questions the function of the artist, this hard-to-shape activity with blurred contours, both privileged and precarious, that acts between the exposure of private life and the subjectification of public life.
Her exhibition is divided into two parts. The first, open to the public, features the 19 episodes of a comedy between fiction and documentary: Gruppo Petrolio. Produced collectively and inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s book Pétrole, this film evokes the evils of the oil industry, technological progress and gentrification, and questions the value of artistic production in the face of political activism.
The second exhibition reads like a diary, that of the artist herself, and reports, through new bodies of work, what happened inside and outside the Palais de Tokyo (in hotel rooms in Paris, in the emotional and professional relationships of the artist, in national and international news) during the time interval which separated the first intuitions from the final result, that is to say the exhibition.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar (1975) dances, talks, writes, teaches, and makes objects, video installations, films, journals (Pétunia), alone or with her friends, her students, or her mother, evoking transgressive figures from the cultural production of the 20th century: Josephine Baker, Guillaume Dustan, Bjarne Melgaard, Cosey Fanni Tutti or Pier Paolo Pasolini. Her work is not structured around a theme or particular axis, but instead searches to bring social and political questions into the field of aesthetics and to render visible the contradictions of such an enterprise. Lili is a professor at the Haute école d’art et de design (HEAD), Geneva, and is represented by Galerie C L E A R I N G (New York – Brussels – Los Angeles) and Galerie Emanuel Layr (Vienna).
Selected exhibitions: TEETH GUMS MACHINES FUTURE SOCIETY (ajh.pm, Bielefeld, Germany, 2023), I Want All of the Above to Be the Sun (MACM, Montreal, Canada, 2023), Lili Reynaud-Dewar. Rome, 1er et 2 novembre 1975 (Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria, 2023), I invited men into my hotel room and asked them very personal questions about their lives, (Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna, Austria, 2022), Bergen Assembly (Bergen, Norway, 2022), Marcel Duchamp Prize (Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, 2021), Beyond the Land of Minimal Possessions (Galerie Emanuel Layr, Vienna, Austria, 2019), Oops, I think I may have lost my lighter somewhere on the ground… Could someone please be so kind to come here and help me find it? (CLEARING, New York, USA, 2019)
A curator at the Palais de Tokyo since 2020, François Piron is also an art critic, publisher and teacher. He has co-founded a number of cultural venues: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, which he co-directed between 2000 and 2006, and castillo / corrales in Paris between 2007 and 2015. He is also one of the founders of the publishing house Paraguay. He has recently curated the exhibitions Sarah Maldoror: cinéma tricontinental (2021), which travelled from the Palais de Tokyo to Lisbon and to Luanda, and which will soon open at the Wexner Center for the Arts in the United States, as well as the exhibition Exposed (2023), in collaboration with Elisabeth Lebovici and Clément Raveu.
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Hello, my name is Lili and we are many, exhibition view, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole
View of the exhibition, Gruppo Petrolio, Palais de Tokyo, 19.10.23 – 07.01.24. Courtesy of the artist. Photo : Aurélien Mole