.In 2026, the artist Aline Bouvy will represent Luxembourg at the 61st Venice Art Biennale. In recent years, contemporary art in the wealthy city-state has experienced a noticeable rise, and her exhibition has opened on 21 June at Casino Luxembourg—a platform that has become central to the local art scene. Housed in the former Casino Bourgeois, originally built in the late 19th century, the venue was relaunched in 1996 as the Forum for Contemporary Art.
“It’s really this hot—or is it just me?” says Aline as she crosses the threshold. The comment, together with the exhibition’s title Hot Flashes, clearly alludes to the theme of menopause. Bouvy is a radical feminist, and one quickly realises that provocative statements are to be expected. She is a gifted artist, and one anticipates a powerful message.
In short, the exhibition centres on childhood as a crucial stage in the formation of identity, values, and the body—within a social and political context. On the exhibition’s exterior, a wall-length mural stretches across the entrance hall, executed in a 1970s style reminiscent of those found in public institutions for children. In my own childhood, similar murals were a common sight in hospital paediatric wards and nursery schools.
The vivid colours and childlike aesthetics seem familiar, yet their scale and isolation produce an uncanny feeling: everything appears recognisable, and yet something is subtly off. A sense of unease arises in the viewer. What is wrong with childhood? From infancy—visually included—through such public murals, children are subjected to imposed social norms and stereotypes, conditioning them to conform to the dictates of society.
Aline Bouvy’s installations are enriched—and often deciphered—through her hyperlinks to the work of American feminists. For instance, in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, activist Lee Edelman directs her reflections against an ideology founded on what she terms (stripping it of academic jargon like “reproductive futurism”) the cult of childhood and family. This ideology legitimises a politics that defends patriarchy, the nuclear family, heteronormativity—and, consequently, social immobility. In such a society, queer individuals are excluded from the public agenda precisely because they do not reproduce.
Returning to the exhibition’s title—Hot Flashes—women undergoing menopause are, in this context, aligned with the queer: they lose the interest of society and its dominant narratives, marked as infertile and, therefore, obsolete. Yet 50-year-old Aline Bouvy—herself a living rebuttal to this cultural postulate—embodies the renewed relevance of women at midlife. In the golden millions, life at fifty is only beginning. Hormone therapy helps pave the way.
Bouvy frequently engages with the body as an object of control: how we are conditioned through domesticity, hygiene, and food. One installation features a sterile, white “kitchen” at the centre of which lies a large red cross—a site of woman’s crucifixion, symbolising the societal decree that “a woman must cook.” This kitchen is stripped of all comfort and warmth; it becomes a chilling, mechanical void. The piece critiques the role society imposes on women—one presented as “natural”, yet in truth thoroughly constructed.
The installation may make the viewer feel like an object within the space, rather than its master. The kitchen’s clinical cleanliness provokes anxiety—it seems “painfully pure” or “horrifyingly scrubbed.” This sterile aesthetic becomes a metaphor for suppressed desire, for the loss of spontaneity and naturalness in life, particularly in female maturation.
This social construct—rooted in biology and excessive consumption—can and should be dismantled. It is a call to liberation from the burden of countless embodied prescriptions. Participate daily and intimately in this radical transformation, in a total revolution, through the transformative power of art!—says Aline.
At the centre of the hall stands a mesmerising monumental sculpture—a tall, elongated wall made of one-way mirror. From one side, it offers a clear view; from the other, only the viewer’s own reflection. This installation divides the space while simultaneously uniting it, playing with perception: who is the observer here, and who is the observed?
One of the figures reflected is a familiar character from Stephen King—a chimera, serving as the artist’s alter ego. Through bodily transformation, Bouvy explores the transformation of consciousness.
“The body merges with Aline’s own—it’s a moment of extraterrestrial estrangement, an attempt to reconstruct the self from fragments. It resembles a striving towards an othered self, one that is freer, beyond logic,” says Stilbé Schroeder, the exhibition’s curator.
The title of another installation—Servant, Clown or Enemy—references the work of American artist Julie Becker, known for creating model interiors of living and working spaces, motel rooms rendered in dollhouse scale that evoke a disturbing sense of claustrophobia and metaphysical dread. In Bouvy’s version, the disorder within polystyrene houses underscores the ambiguity and multiplicity of roles a woman is forced to perform. The home becomes a place where she is always half-actress, half-victim.
Materials like polystyrene and tulle contribute to a cold, “toy-like” atmosphere, as though the viewer is interacting not with a real home, but with a replica saturated with uncertainty and falseness. The domestic sphere becomes a site of pressure: the reduced-scale figure symbolises how societal norms physically “compress” themselves onto the female body. This is a reboot of identity. The merging of servant, clown, and enemy represents an attempt to slip out of one predefined role—only to enter another, more hybrid and “mutant” form.
Aline Bouvy has long been known for refusing to confine herself to a single genre or medium. For her, the exhibition format itself becomes a fully realised artistic statement. In Hot Flashes, she explores the body as an object of labour, protest, desire, pain, and even violence. The artist transforms the Casino Luxembourg into an almost theatrical space, where the viewer is not merely an observer, but a participant in an unfolding performance. This effect is heightened by the exhibition’s atmosphere—its silence, tension, and subdued lighting. The setting evokes a closed film set or a stage awaiting its actors. Visitors feel as though they have stepped into someone else’s memory or dream, where nostalgia and unease coexist.