Julie Becker, Kunstverein Düsseldorf

Talk

I, etcetera
Fiona Vilmer in conversation with Gloria Hasnay

Thursday, November 12, 2026

at Kunstvrein fur die Rheinland un Wesfalen

Fiona Vilmer, in conversation with Gloria Hasnay, will explore the notion of subjectivity in the work of artist Julie Becker, particularly how it is shaped by the relations between inhabited spaces, cultural imaginaries, and material circumstances. Drawing on her ongoing research, Vilmer will present previously unseen images and archival materials that will inform a forthcoming monograph on Becker’s work.

Julie Becker (1972–2016) was an American artist who lived and worked in Los Angeles. Working across photography, installation, video, drawing, and sculpture, her work engages the cinematic, psychological, and material realities of her hometown and the imaginaries that have shaped its image. Often centering on interiors—whether fabricated or real, rendered as miniature models or staged at life-size—her artistic approach challenges conventional notions of scale and exposes the impermanence of these spaces. Moving between reality and fiction, Becker reflects a city in which everyday life appears inseparable from the myths and disillusions it manufactures. Autobiographical elements often slip into mythology, with the artist herself contributing to this ambiguity. Taking this as a point of departure, Vilmer and Hasnay will discuss how subjectivity operates through digression, at times offering reassurance, at others generating further confusion, and how such shifts can, in Becker’s own words, “move people from one place to another.” Fiction and reality cease to be distinct categories, revealing an intense subterranean activity in which boundaries shift within the same chaotic space of oppression and imagination. Their conversation will also address how Becker’s work engages with the social and cultural conditions of America in the 1990s and 2000s, as well as their continuing resonance in the present.

Graphic design: Ctms studio