memymom. Home Game

memymom is the mother‐daughter artistic collaboration of Marilène Coolens and Lisa De Boeck. Their transgenerational project, which first emerged in the 1990s, consists of intimate archives and family photos where Marilène urges her daughter Lisa to express and invent herself by improvising her own theatrical scenes. Since 2004, the protagonists have worked together behind and in front of the lens, simultaneously photographer and model. Over the years, memymom’s dreamlike, partly directed portraits have matured into a conversation about metamorphosis, personal identity, potential, as well as a plea for sensual analysis and tragic romanticism, as irrefutably illustrated in their latest series Somewhere Under the Rainbow.

In this book, which is the culmination and prolongation of their recent work, the two artists disclose the way in which their themes and visual language have remained constant over the past 30 years, while simultaneously evolving fascinatingly in terms of aesthetics and content, through recurring references and reflections. This exhibition also provides an opportunity to see how the inclusion of an assorted group of other people, each playing a different role, has always been part of their artistic process.

Text in English and French.