Lili Dujourie

In the tradition of the Flemish primitives, the body of work by Lili Dujourie (Roeselare, Belgium, 1941) establishes an intellectual and sensory connection with the viewer, at the same time that it presents a critical reflection on specific ideas and categories in art history. 

In her work, Dujourie plays with the sensuality and immediacy of materials, emphasises the performative aspect of the artwork (its theatrical and processual dimension), investigates the relationship between nature and culture, and gives decorative and ornamental elements a central role. Her videos, drawings, installations and sculptures speak of the passing (and the weight) of time and move between the figurative and the abstract, generating a sensation of melancholy and searching for an emotional understanding of space. 

Lili Dujourie’s work carries a sense of melancholy. It communicates feelings of loss and longing through an aesthetic that springs from the Flemish tradition of Rubens and Vermeer. The work encourages the viewer’s introspection by the use of closed interiors, fractured pictorial spaces and titles which often emphasise the sense of something ‘held back.’ Her artistic production is to be considered as a dialogue with the loss from which life just happens to draw its force and dynamics. The videos by Lili Dujourie constitute an important link in a great artistic story in which the force of silence and subtle gesture imply a refusal to represent the world as time would have it.