Solo show

Gäelle Choisne (1985, FR) lives and works in Paris. Sensitive to contemporary issues, Gaëlle Choisne’s practice considers the complexity of the world, its political and cultural disorder, whether it be the over-exploitation of nature, its resources, or the vestiges of colonial history, where Creole esoteric traditions, myths and popular cultures mingle. Her projects are conceived as ecosystems of sharing and collaboration, pockets of «resistance» where new possibilities are created, notably with the «Temple of Love» project. Initiated from Roland Barthes’ original essay on love, «Fragments d’un discours amoureux» (1977), Gaëlle Choisne adds a political dimension to the concept of love by paying homage to invisible bodies, minority and fragile souls, and dispossessed hearts. «Temple of love » is an evolutionary project defining itself through its modes of appearance and genesis according to its invitations and its location. The works/installations of Gaëlle Choisne have been exhibited in many institutions: (Vitry-sur-Seine), Centrale Powerhouse (Montreal), CAFA Museum (Beijing), Pera Museum (Istanbul), MAM - Musée d’art moderne de Paris, Musée Fabre (Montpellier), Zacheta Gallery (Warsaw), The Mistake Room (Los Angeles), Bétonsalon (Paris), Gr_und project space (Berlin), MAMO - Centre d’art de la Cité radieuse de Marseille, La Villette x Pompidou (Paris), Centre d’art contemporain La Halle des bouchers (Vienne), Musée archéologique Henri-Prade (Lattes), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon etc. She has also participated in several biennials and triennials: 15th Gwandju Biennial (2024), 3rd Toronto Biennial of Art (2024), 5th New Museum Triennial (2021), 11th International Biennial of Contemporary Art (GIBCA), 13th International Biennial of Lyon (2015), 12th Havana Biennial (2015), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017) and 14th Curitiba Biennial (2017). She has been part of many residency programs in France and internationally such as “Meeting Points collaboration” with CCA -Campus Caraïbéen des Arts (Martinique), Bethanian-KW (Berlin), the Rijksakademie (Amsterdam), Atelier Van Lieshout (Rotterdam), the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris and OPTICA & Art3 Valence (Montreal). In 2024, Gaëlle Choisne won the Marcel Duchamp Prize and, in 2021, the AWARE Prize. In 2019, she is nominated for the Ricard Foundation Prize and the Sam Art Project. Gaëlle Choisne is represented by the gallery Air de Paris, Romainville (FR).

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Aquarium Biennial Fair Fruits Installation Love Performance Plants Sculpture Shells Stèles Temple of Love Videos Workshop

Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order – WIELS - Gaëlle Choisne

Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order – WIELS, 2025

Brussels, Belgium

Curators: Sofia Dati, Helena Kritis, Dirk Snauwaert

Participating artists: Bianca Baldi, Minia Biabiany, Gaëlle Choisne, Ade Darmawan, Edith Dekyndt, Suzanne Husky, Saodat Ismailova, Suzanne Jackson, Ann Veronica Janssens, Joan Jonas, Pauline Julier, Barbara & Michael Leisgen, Anne Marie Maes, Jumana Manna, Marisa Merz, Jota Mombaça, Nour Mobarak, mountaincutters, Otobong Nkanga, Kicsy Abreu Stable, Precious Okoyomon, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Annie Ratti, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Maarten Vanden Eynde & Musasa, Cecilia Vicuña, and Adrián Villar Rojas.

© Eline Willaert

Featured artworks :

Safe space for a passing History_What is love? (1-6), 2025
6 plywood panels, UV print, collage, paint, oil pastel, cowrie shells, precious stones, clay, keys, other meaningful objects.
Courtesy of the artist and Air de Paris

Safe space for a passing History_Look at me baby, 2025
Plywood panel, UV print, collage, paint, oil pastel, cowrie shells, precious stones, clay, keys, other meaningful objects.
Courtesy of the artist and Air de Paris

Ego, he goes (Fridge self-speech and shine love consciousness – Period!), 2021
Metal, etched acrylic resin and pigment, sound, ceramic, photographs and found documents, magnets, LED, aluminium laminate, wood and glass frame.
Collection Lafayette Anticipations – Fonds de dotation Famille Moulin

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Magical Realism: Imagining Natural Dis/order brings together over thirty artists at WIELS and argos, offering new ideas and perspectives on the relationship with our planet.

Adopting the prism of two seemingly opposing terms—magic and realism—, the exhibition examines how artists imagine living environments amid the ecological, political and social challenges that mark today’s world.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the artistic and literary genre known as magical realism, which is characterised by its infusion of worlds of magic, dreams and myth into mundane narratives—creating stories that redefine the boundaries of reality. The exhibition looks at how the porosity between ‘magic’ and ‘reality’ may open up spaces for other horizons to emerge in response to proliferating monocultures, precarious lives, and climate transformation.

When the world of science and hard facts has been torn apart from the world of magic and intuition, how to reconcile this fracture, what traces does it leave and how do we repair it? The exhibition navigates these questions through works that shape worlds via painting, moving image, sound and installation. They engage with different spaces, from the cosmos and its galaxies to the scientist’s lab; matters such as bodies of water, bacterial skins or 3D prints; and geologic processes surfacing through the underground rumbling of the earth or the noise of a sinking city.

The artists navigate different, complementary and contradictory ways of relating to ecosystems and myths of the “natural” environment, seeking refuge in dreams and in the raw matter and bare life of the world. At the confluence of analytic and speculative tools, Magical Realism gestures towards restoring connections in a biosphere exhausted by exploitation, dispossession and debt.

Magical Realism follows The Absent Museum (2017) and Risquons-tout (2020) as the third in-house realisation of a recurring ambitious exhibition format developed and conceived by the WIELS team, focusing on specific patterns within contemporary artistic practice that underscore the necessity for transformation.

Through a large-scale exhibition—including a section organised at argos—a publication and a live program including workshops, talks, screenings, walks and performances, Magical Realism reflects an ecology that addresses both the aesthetic implications of our relationship with natural worlds at a tipping point, as well as the social, economic and scientific implications of exploring and shifting our conceptions of the planet.