Sophie Nys

Sophie Nys (born 1974 in Antwerp, lives and works in Brussels) is interested in history: art history, history of philosophy, history of the great figures of history or dictatorial practices of medieval torture. This eclecticism of centers of interest around the historical practice is found in the work of the artist in the form of thematic declinations and variations. So when Sophie Nys is interested in the word “pillory”, it is both a photographic documentary searches for the object, in the Middle Ages, to expose publicly a condemned, that use of anti-Semitic newspaper Au Pilori sadly famous during the Second World War. This set of side steps, sliding of the object to the word itself reflects finally practice itself of the artist. If it is built, upstream of the work around a work of investigation and documentation, the artist goes through history across the board in search of a grain of sand that could stem the flow history. So when Sophie Nys hand on the trail of Lenin in her video Lénine en pensant, expresses more grotesque side of the figure of a politician, a distanced and objective analysis of Russian communism.  The artist weaves around issues loaded with a weight sometimes painful history, interpretations taking various forms of humor that does not mean is absent.