Exhibition Can We Pretend Nothing Happened? by Fabienne Audéoud and Ouija by Michael Van den

The exhibition *Ouija*, the first monographic show of Michael Van den Abeele in a French institution, draws inspiration from a series of works created in 2026.

These pieces depict backs tattooed with Ouija boards, a mediumistic tool believed to facilitate communication with the beyond through numbers and letters.

The body, seemingly silent, becomes the medium for a spirit dictation, a vehicle of meaning.

The exhibition brings together several series of sculptures, drawings, and two videos, exploring the relationship between subject and object, where speech escapes the body to animate things.

Through references to ventriloquism, cabaret, and musical theater, a daily drama unfolds: pasta takes the place of guests at a dinner, an iron discovers its reflection in a mirror, and miniature beds, set upright, evoke abstract paintings.

This blend of drama and comedy questions consumption, digestion, class habits, as well as individual and collective narratives and fantasies.

Between objects seeking introspection and bodies surrendered to letting go, the exhibition raises an essential question: with whom to identify?

*Can We Pretend Nothing Happened?* is the first major monographic exhibition dedicated to the work of Fabienne Audéoud. On this occasion, the artist presents over a hundred paintings created between the 2000s and today, some exhibited for the first time.

These works, from various series such as *the Maman*, *the Prions pour*, *the Houmous*, *the Beatrix Potter*, *the No*, *the Brown Paintings*, *the Oysters and the Goats*, *the Cookies*, and *the Maigritude*, address recurring themes in her work: the relationship to language (what is said or silenced), beliefs (can they be questioned?), her experience as a woman (to identify or disidentify?), as well as power dynamics and social norms (who or what makes the law?).

Through humor, references to art history and popular culture, painting itself is interrogated as a medium suited to these questions.

The exhibition shifts the traditional expectation of a retrospective towards an interrogative form: *Can We Pretend Nothing Happened?* Even before being addressed to the public, this question is integrated into the artist's reflection on the display.

She chooses to suspend any answer by presenting the canvases on the floor on small wedges, unhooked as they would be in the studio, awaiting a decision or a shift.

The works, arranged in a long line leaning against the art center's walls, touch each other by their edges, forming a continuous chain of motifs, words, and registers.

This proximity reveals phrases, contradictions, and dissonances, offering an experience of disagreement or *making do*. How to respond to this invitation?

On the occasion of the exhibition, CRAC Alsace and Ness Books are publishing the first monograph of Fabienne Audéoud, tracing her entire body of work since the 1990s. The book is scheduled for release in early 2027.