Musée de la Mémoire ‘PROPRIÉTÉ UNIVERSELLE’ ® - FR version - Joëlle Tuerlinckx

This artist's book, a catalogue of a museum without walls, reads like an account of a work under construction in response to a commission in a former coalfield. Joëlle Tuerlinckx guides us through the studio’s archives, and through the development of a thought process that culminates in the inventory of the M.M. collection (‘Musée de la Mémoire’ or ‘Museum of Memory’). Building on the great classic of the inventory catalogue and encompassing 'all of J.T.'s work', she presents 'a museum in itself'.

While the book is originally connected to 'La Triangulaire de Cransac', a monumental work of art in the small town of Aveyron, it also puts into perspective the evolution of the museum in its relationship with the artist and the book. Joëlle Tuerlinckx reminds us that if the museum is compared to a book because of its internal organisation, then a book can be compared to a museum because of its systematics and its method of contemplating the object.

"This outstanding project is a book about a museum that does not exist or did not exist. It contains an extraordinary amount of material, but nevertheless exudes a strong consistency and remains soothing. Lots of aspects come together, including photography, collage, typography, artefacts, notes and archival documents, and it is at once contemporary and timeless. It constitutes an alternative and clever way to walk through a museum in its own free and casual way. Moreover, it is very daring and innovative to make a book function as a kind of tactile museum."

— Jury from the Henry van de Velde Awards 2025

Gold winner of the Henry van de Velde Graphic Award 2025
Nominated for the Prix Bob Calle 2025 du livre d’artiste

Joëlle Tuerlinckx is a multi-media artist whose works pose as archival materials. Her visual vocabulary includes books, display cases, wall installations, video screens, and (not least) the exhibition rooms themselves. In her situation-specific presentations, she establishes a relationship between simple things and found objects, texts, drawings, her own earlier works, and film material rich with intertextuality. Through the application of different methods of transformation and an infinite system of references and quotes, she lets us experience space and time, present and past, memory and immediacy all on the same level. Tuerlinckx’ s works are variable; they remain fixated only for a moment. They are subject to a permanent process of reconsideration and re-adaptation in which media categories and designations are continually subverted, leaving the works in an open process.

Editing and sequencing: Joëlle Tuerlicnkx & Adriaan Van Leuven
Design: Joëlle Tuerlicnkx & Adriaan Van Leuven
584 pages
23.5 x 29.5 cm
Section-sewn OTA-bound softcover
Language: French
Publication date: May 2024
ISBN: 9789464002393
Co-published with Captures éditions, France