Julie Béna

Julie Béna was born in 1982 in Paris, France, and currently lives and works between Prague and Paris. The work of Julie Béna is made up of an eclectic set of references, combining contemporary and ancient literature, high and low art, humor and seriousness, parallel times and spaces. Comprising sculpture, installation, film, and performance, her work seems to often float in an infinite vacuum, unfolding against a fictional backdrop where everything is possible. Over the past years, Béna has developed a range of personal cosmologies in which she stages seemingly banal characters and objects that have enigmatic conversations and interactions with each other. From Pantopon Rose – a character taken from William S. Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch’ –, to Miss None and Mister Peanut – a disembodied floating wig and the iconic monocled anthropomorphic peanut –, Béna lends her characters a singular agency and voice, which defines them by what they are not. ...

NıCOLETTı is a London-based gallery committed to supporting the development of emerging artists. Founded in 2018 as an itinerant curatorial project, the gallery opened its first permanent space in 2019. NıCOLETTı’s programme focuses on researching and supporting emerging artists in the realization of institutional projects and museum presentations. Many of the artists represented by the gallery have held their first UK solo exhibition at NıCOLETTı and have subsequently exhibited in prominent international institutions and biennials. The gallery presents a diverse range of conceptually-driven practices, with a particular emphasis on how aesthetics can offer new perspectives on pressing socio-political issues. ...