Jacqueline Mesmaeker

In her extraordinary work, Jacqueline Mesmaeker (1929–2023, Brussels, BE) combined poetic sensibility with conceptual thinking. She began her career in fashion, design and architecture. Beginning in the 1970s, she developed her now well-known works in a variety of media. Her oeuvre includes sculpture and sculptural interventions, painting and drawing, photography, film and video, as well as language and text. An essential feature of her work is her sensitive awareness of the existential processes of remembering and forgetting, as well as the psychological, political and aesthetic significance of the subtle and the hidden. Mesmaeker experimented with different spatial, temporal and pictorial levels as well as sign and symbolic languages, creating new and surprising connections. Her work often contains literary references as well as explorations of political and historical contexts.  

Mesmaeker taught for many years at renowned Belgian art academies. For a long time, however, her work was overshadowed by that of her male colleagues, not least because of her reservations about the art market. In recent years, her work, which she has pursued consistently for more than five decades, has received extraordinary recognition. Alongside Marcel Broodthaers and Joëlle Tuerlinckx, Mesmaeker is now considered a central figure on the Belgian art scene.

In the first retrospective of Jacqueline Mesmaeker's work outside Belgium, the outstanding oeuvre of this conceptual artist will be comprehensively presented and honored. The exhibition will include the artist's major works from all phases of her artistic career. Special attention will also be given to the artist's film and video work.

On the occasion of the retrospective, a comprehensive catalog of the artist's work with international authors will be published in German and English.