Opening: Ethel Lilienfeld, The embrace of toads

Ethel Lilienfeld, 🐶👑, from the series iiDOLLS, 2024,  Production Botanique

At the age of 28, Ethel Lilienfeld is one of the rising stars of the digital arts. The uniqueness of her artistic universe has attracted the attention of Le Botanique, which, true to its mission of promoting emerging art, has decided to support the artist in the production of iiDOLLS, her new photographic series. This new production will be shown at the Museum du Botanique, alongside the installation Invisible Filter (prod. Le Fresnoy, 2022), making her the youngest artist to exhibit there. 

In February 2025, Ethel Lilienfeld will continue her collaboration with the Botanique by presenting EMI in a second exhibition, this time at the Galerie. Shown at several festivals, EMI will be displayed for the first time in its complete, hybrid version, combining video projection and digital screens, at the heart of a theatrical staging of an opulent feast. 

More about the artist

Born in France in 1995 and based in Brussels, Ethel Lilienfeld questions the growing influence of the virtual body on reality and everyday life. Through photography, video and installations combining technology and traditional techniques, she explores the tensions between social norms, identity, gender and space, creating powerful, immersive works.

Her work has already been exhibited in prestigious institutions around the world, including Ars Electronica (Austria), the Musée de la Photographie (Belgium) and the FotoFest Biennial (USA). 

With the support of the French Embassy in Belgium and the Institut français. As part of  EXTRA, a program that supports French contemporary creation in Belgium.

Ethel Lilienfeld's work navigates the delicate boundary between what lies before and behind the screen, between shop windows and appearances—at the intersection of articulation and mediation, where the self is shaped by the gaze of the other. However, since the advent of photography and cinema, the dynamics of these relationships have expanded beyond human partners to include devices, interfaces, and evaluative systems. The "other" has transformed into a mechanical eye, and later, an algorithmic eye, bringing with it the unconscious biases of our patriarchal societies: a male gaze that disregards, sexualizes, exoticizes, monetizes, excludes, and objectifies.

Invisible Filter is inspired by an online anecdote in which an AI-generated filter of a middle-aged Chinese woman crashes mid-stream, exposing her to the hatred of internet users and leading to her banishment from the platform. Here, the reversibility is absolute, telling a story that blends the myth of Narcissus with the elixirs/filters of youth. It confronts us with our contradictions, while the faces reveal nothing more than their willingness to be shaped by the desires and gazes of others. For it is no longer divine figures that the media seeks to make us long for, but stereotypes of normality: faces designed for Instagram. Beyond the misogynistic attacks that permeate her latest series iiDOLLS, Ethel Lilienfeld addresses the paradoxes of photogeny—the amplification of artificial beauty driven by a dual capture: the photographic shoot and the algorithmic loop through which the image circulates.

The artist rides the wave of viral micro-trends, constructing the invisible walls of our echo chambers and plunging users into a ‘filter bubble’. Where a mishmash of sophisticated interiors, cooking recipes, fake nails, extravagant make-up, sexy corsets and unnecessary fast-fashion accessories that "twist the look to make an Instagram outfit" appear in a jumble. Little has changed, and the roles of the perfect housewife, mother, or whore still dominate the narratives on social networks. However, by reclaiming the insult and amplifying the traits assigned to women—whether as codes, bitches, cats, cows, vipers, or monkeys—Ethel Lilienfeld transforms them into allegories (from the Greek állos, "other," and agoreúô, "to speak in public"). Figures of desire, submission, and vice, women and animals have long been part of allegorical imagery, captivating the spectator’s gaze while flattering the intellect with a hidden meaning. Yet, by multiplying props, staging, lighting, and performance, Lilienfeld ventures into the realm of fiction. In doing so, she disrupts the collective phantasmagoria, exposing its inherent arbitrariness.

Marion Zilio - OctobER 2024