Mademoiselle de la Faille

Mademoiselle de la Faille is a photographic reproduction of a large tear in the artist's living room wallpaper. According to Mesmaeker, This tear was made by the owners who wanted to see if there was any dampness in the wall. The artist saw it as the poetry of everyday life and decided to leave the tear intact and visible. As in her Introductions roses (1996-2019), the subject here is the interstice, the slit, the crack. She chose to leave this tear in her wall gaping, thus creating a work just as erotically charged as the other pieces.

Now part of her living room, Mesmaeker made the flaw so much her own that she ended up reproducing it in a larger-than-life print for her retrospective exhibition Ah quelle aventure! She transposed this domestic detail to the exhibition space at Bozar, affectionately calling it Mademoiselle de la Faille. It's as if the artist sees this “mademoiselle” as an interlocutor with whom she shares the most intimate secrets.

The tear becomes a work in its own right, which in turn reveals the to-and-fro between the intimacy of the artist’s private apartment and her artworks made public.