Lili Reynaud-Dewar

Lili Reynaud-Dewar was born in December 1975 in La Rochelle. She studied classical dance and public law there. She writes, dances, teaches, films, speaks, and produces objects—monumental, functional, or decorative. She works alone or collaboratively, drawing on autobiographical material or on figures transgressive within twentieth-century cultural production, such as Josephine Baker, Guillaume Dustan, Bjarne Melgaard, and Cosey Fanni Tutti.

She is interested in the history of racial and sexual emancipations; in the circulation and interpretation of works; in biographical and sociological motifs in cultural production; and in the shifting figure of the artist in a globalized world.

Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, notably at the Kunsthalle Basel (2010), Le Magasin, Grenoble (2012), the New Museum, New York (2014), the Audain Gallery, Vancouver (2015), the Hamburger Kunstverein (2016), Museion Bolzano (2017), the MAC Montréal, the MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, the Palais de Tokyo (2023), and Le Consortium (2025). She has also exhibited at the Generali Foundation, Vienna (2012); the Centre Pompidou (2010 and 2013); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2011 and 2014); CAPC Bordeaux (2008 and 2013); Punta della Dogana, Venice; and the Hermès Workshop, Seoul (2018).

She was selected to participate in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015), the Lyon Biennale (2013), and the 5th Berlin Biennale (2008). In 2013, she received the Fondation d’entreprise Ricard Prize, and in 2021 she was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize for a film made during her year as a resident at the Villa Medici. She is a co-founder of the feminist journal Pétunia, together with Dorothée Dupuis and Valérie Chartrain, and has taught at the Geneva University of Art and Design since 2010. A monograph devoted to her work was published by Phaidon in 2019.

During her residency, Lili Reynaud-Dewar will devote herself to writing a very special autobiography, intertwining the story of her life with that of a German institution: the Schirn Kunsthalle. The book project can be described as follows: “Lili Reynaud-Dewar is a French woman. She is 50 years old. The Schirn Kunsthalle is a German institution. It is 40 years old. Lili is an artist, the Schirn is an art venue. Both are products of the cultural policies of their time. This book brings together fragments of their respective biographies. It intertwines their successes and failures, their mistakes and their foresight, the flesh and the political, sex and administration, the intimate and the public, what is exposed and what is hidden, as well as the individuals and events that have contributed, since the beginning of their existence, to making them what they are today, in 2026.” To complete this work, Lili Reynaud-Dewar will investigate her year spent in Rome in the late 2010s, interviewing several people she met during her year as a resident at the Villa Medici (2018-2019). She will also work on finalizing the book with the editor of the text, Baptiste Pinteaux, currently a resident at the Villa.