[dentifier] K2026-008

"For her research, life is not so much a subject as the irrefutable context in which things happen, a transparent premise." Curator Piero Bisello in KIOSK, 2022.

R2T6 is a self-portrait by Mona Filleul. On a large rectangular insulation panel, a tilted painting shows the artist taking a selfie in a mirror – a double self-representation, split between the visible image in the mirror and the invisible one captured by the smartphone. The tilted painting, in turn, leans against a second painted surface depicting the artist's studio.

Traditional materials like tempera, mulberry fibres, hemp, beeswax lend the work a tactile, almost fleshy quality, giving the self-portrait an air approaching the sacred. This is set against an AI-generated manga character, whose contours are traced in LED lights at the rear of the work, bringing the fictional figure visually to life.

The double-sided insulation panel framing the self-portrait carries its own biographical weight: the artist once used it to build a warm shelter in a squatted property in Brussels, where she lived for four years. It was there that Filleul began her transition, which she experiences as a form of rebirth – and so the work speaks equally to the context that made that transformation possible. Above the self-portrait hangs a necklace, a gift from a close friend, a quiet trace of personal relationships woven into the work.