1964-

Valérie Belin has exhibited extensively both in the USA and abroad. A major touring retrospective was organized in 2008, at the Huis Marseilles, Museum of Photography, Amsterdam; the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; and the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne. Her work has been featured in several group exhibitions, including the Mori Art Museum Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Belin is the subject of numerous monographs, including Valérie Belin: Complete Work (2007) and Valérie Belin: Black Eyed Susan (2011). Belin’s work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Musée d’art Moderne de la ville de Paris, Kunsthaus Zürich, Los Angeles County Museum, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Valérie Belin works in two stages for her Black Eyed Susan series: an image of an elegant woman with a fifties aesthetics is combined with a bouquet of flowers to create the final composition by “inlaying” the two images inside each other. Belin has “decorated” them with jewelry, makeup and specific hairdos that coincide with the baroque shape of the flowers. Similarly, the flowers are chosen based on their specific graphic qualities, with colors limited to two or three shades. The predominance of black recalls not only the popular comic from the fifties, but adds to the wallpaper effect of the work.