THEMA: ISABELLE WENZEL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION
Lille Art Up! 2026: An 18th Edition Looking Toward “New Horizons”
The contemporary art fair Lille Art Up!, a truly European and cosmopolitan event, returns from March 12 to 15, 2026, for its 18th edition at the heart of Lille Grand Palais.
Under the theme New Horizons, this edition highlights the emerging art scene and innovative artistic practices, where artists explore the boundaries between disciplines, materials, and socially engaged themes.
The fair will reflect hybrid and alternative approaches that are reshaping the landscape of contemporary art. Among the highlights, the Thema exhibition, organized in partnership with the CRP/ Regional Center for Photography Hauts-de-France in Douchy-les-Mines (59), will offer an immersive experience into the world of Isabelle Wenzel (born in 1982), a German visual artist who has, for nearly twenty years, made her own body the primary material of her work.
Blending imbalance, movement, and form, her singular oeuvre captivates with its performative, free, and sometimes burlesque character. A large-scale presentation will trace her artistic journey, showcasing the originality of her photographic language.
Lille Art Up! 2026 promises to be a must-see event for discovering the new faces of contemporary creation.
Isabelle Wenzel – Lens 1
Interface presents itself as a platform for expression with a twofold objective: on the one hand, it supports and brings visibility to the emerging and international art scene. On the other, it invites the public to consider art not only as an object of acquisition, but also as a tool for thought, learning, and openness.
This exhibition brings together four emerging contemporary artists:
Kirsten Hutsch explores notions of transfer, transformation, and the ambiguity between reality and representation. Her works question perception and materiality, revealing the reciprocity between making and unmaking, presence and absence.
© Courtesy of the artist
Esther Denis investigates the boundary between life and death, nature and artificiality. Her installations, marked by a strange and striking beauty, combine diorama, video, sculpture, and scenography.
© Alexandre Alloul
Florian Pugnaire roots his practice in a workshop in motion, an intermediate space between creation and exhibition. The artist is distinguished by his fascination with transforming materiality: ruin, construction site, and metamorphosis constitute forms of dramaturgy in which the act of creation becomes the very subject of the work.
© Courtesy of the artist
Elia Kalogianni offers an immersive installation in which artificial light alters the relationship between humans, animals, and plants. Her work confronts the control exerted by humans over nature and opens a space for reflection on otherness.
© Tommy Smits
