Nils Alix-Tabeling
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2021
1991
Poland
Piktogram
Nils Alix-Tabeling b. 1991 in Paris, lives and works Montargis, FR. Master Degree at the Royal College of Art, London, GB
His practice encompasses sound installation, film, sculpture and performance. The bodies depicted in his sculptures move between different genetic iterations of what a body can be – expressing the potentialities of becoming. The mutability of form suggests the mutability of identity and the dissolution of the limits of the body. These sculptures then become activated by performance and film, props-becoming-characters, given voiceovers and interacted with, eroticised.
Together at Last! ... Pierrot & Harlequin, in a rural fantasy, 2021, Piktogram, installation view. Photo credit: Błażej Pindor
"Together at Last! ... Pierrot & Harlequin, in a rural fantasy" is a sculptural group constituted of a chariot/plow driven by Harlequin and Pierrot, and pulled by a herd of humanoid cats. The sculpture references neoclassical bronze sculptures of horse-drawn chariots that typically adorn important buildings across Europe, suggesting power and the expansion of empire. Here the artist, using a camp aesthetic language, seeks to talk instead about an alternative history of homosexuality and paganism.
The chariot is driven by two figures, Pierrot and Harlequin, portrayed as a mythical gay coupl ...
Futur, Ancien, Fugitif, 2019, Palais de Tokyo, installation view. Photo credit: Aurélien Mole
The works: "Corps Humain à la Botte" and "Corps Humain à l'Éventail" are freely inspired by the famous monument by Vera Moukhina (Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, 1937) representing a worker holding a hammer, and a farmer holding a sickle, symbolising the nobility and power of the working class. But here these utilitarian items are replaced by a profusion of symbols associated with frivolity, perversion and pleasure (the fan, the leather boot, the rose, the tutu). The materials are inexpensive and associated with labour: iron wool to clean wooden floor, plastic sheets for painters, butcher gloves m ...
