Aline Bouvy at the MACS

As suggested by its title Cruising Bye, Aline Bouvy’s exhibition at the MACS takes the form of loitering, in that it is as much about sexual vagrancy and police patrols as stray dogs and queer flirtations.

On the horizon of this poetic, transgressive deviation, we spy the utopia of a fluid sexuality which the visual artist assimilates less with pragmatic LGBT militancy than a permanent critique of the aesthetic and health codes which society uses to keep our bodies in check and contains its desires. Anticipating the end of mortifying inhibitions, her artistic approach undertakes an unbridled eroticisation of our environment by incorporating rundown materials, decadent postures, disused territories and invalid organs.

Her multidisciplinary palette, alternating thermoformed Plexiglas, inlaid linoleums and remote-controlled vehicles, surprises the public through its infringement of good taste and its disregard for taboos. Through its references to Clarism, a transgender mystical movement founded in the 1920 by the German artist Elisarion, Aline Bouvy also revisits the slow, utopian trajectory of a culture that is turning away from the dominant models of patriarchy and heteronormativity. Reaching beyond the norms of bourgeois morality and the boundaries of political correctness, her works even wave them an insolent bye bye in passing, signalling an irreversible mutation of society.

A veritable ode to freedom, Aline Bouvy’s exhibition Cruising Bye thus takes on the poetic appearance of a “wild parade” in which a procession of androgynous police officers (complete with sirens) appear alongside a witches’ Sabbath (under belladonna).

Aline Bouvy
​Cruising Bye
​27.02 - 19.09.2022
​MACS
​Museum of Contemporary Arts of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation
​Site du Grand-Hornu
​Rue Sainte-Louise, 82
​7301 Hornu
​Belgium

Aline Bouvy

Aline Bouvy (1974, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels. After graduating from the ERG (School of Graphic Research) in Brussels and the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, the multidisciplinary artist of Luxembourg origin Aline Bouvy has had a number of residences and exhibitions (both collective and solo) mostly in Europe (Kunstraum, London, 2015; Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels, 2018; Nosbaum Reding Gallery, Luxembourg, 2018; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2019 and Kunsthal Ghent, Belgium, 2021). For the past 13 years, she has been half of an artistic duo with John Gillis and since 2013 has exhibited individually. Empreinte with humour, insolence and poetry in equal measure, Aline Bouvy’s work questions the social norms and values of our times by exploring taboos and playing with the boundaries between good and bad taste.