Evelyne Axell

Curated by Anke Kempkes and Krzysztof Kościuczuk
With Special Participation of Sylvie Fleury

Muzeum Susch presents Body Double, a retrospective exhibition of the Belgian Pop-Surrealist Evelyne Axell (1935-1972). With her original feminist approach in the 1960s Axell became one of the pioneers of Pop Art in Europe. Her distinct body of work is populated by an all-female universe, transcending the established iconography of Pop Art at the time and reclaiming the discourse of women’s sexuality.

Body Double highlights central political themes in Axell’s iconography in the context of the international movements of her time. As an active witness of sexual liberation, Axell focused on a female body freed from past conventions of depicting femininity. Body Double explores the recurring motif of identical female figures in Axell’s compositions: as kindred gatekeepers gracing portals to a territory of unbeknown promises; fragmented portraits imparting the condition of the female ‘split self’; or as ‘homoerotic twins’ absorbed in an embrace, a kiss, or intimate play. Axell’s mirrored multi-ethnic female nudes constitute yet another aspect of the ‘double’, with which Axell expressed her alliance with the nascent post-colonial emancipation and the ‘Black Pride’ and Civil Rights movement in the US. A special variant of the Body Double features in Axell’s vision of a “utopia of bio-botanical freedom”: exotic animals become alter egos, tropical vegetation consumes the body, and surreal beastly hybrids inhabit an alternative sphere of ‘bio-cultural companionship’. The arc of the ‘doubling’ motif culminates in Axell’s tableau La Grande Sortie dans l’Espace (1967): a dance of idealized cosmonautic nudes floating in an abstract space - a future dimension where female pleasure rules freely. 

Co-curated by Anke Kempkes, international curator, art historian and art critic and Krzysztof Kościuczuk, Artistic Director of Muzeum Susch, this exhibition will present an overall of sixty works spanning the broad spectrum of the artist’s entire oeuvre. 

As a special contribution, the exhibition features the prominent installation Marcel et Robert (2009) by Swiss artist Sylvie Fleury, entering into a cross-generational dialogue with Axell’s work.

Evelyne Axell’s oeuvre remains highly evocative in its transgressive sexual iconography, feminist agenda and liberalist utopian outlook.