Josefien Cornette (°1994, Belgium) studied visual arts at LUCA-arts, Ghent (Mixed Media). They have a previous education in art-history and gender- and diversity studies at UGent. They are currently preparing a PhD proposal about embodied narratives in disabled experience(s) in collaboration with LUCA School of Arts and KUL and their first Dutch book ‘Een Huis Dat Pijn Heet’ is coming out in September 2022, together with ASP Editions.

Josefien explores a creative practice that is hybrid and heavily embedded in artistic research. Much of their artistic practices involve combining methodologies throughout academic and artistic fields and reflecting on them, inventing new strategies of researching, archiving, writing and reporting. Josefien invests a lot of time in building a practice that is highly collaborative, open, ethical and fair and incorporates a body of work that reflects a different identity of artistry. Their work can be seen as a very hybrid reaction to contemporary societal issues addressing themes like frailty, melancholy, impairment, and grief. Today Josefien focusses on testimonials as art-objects; their questions on authorship and truth, empowerment, impact within audio installations and auto-ethnographic (lecture)performances and theater pieces and scripts.

Next to their creative practice, Josefien is a heavily involved activist. They work
as a trust person, building towards a more fair, open and accessible art world. Josefien often works in the field of critical disability studies, critical trauma studies, crip- and queer-theory. They work in multiple feminist activist organizations and teach feminist methodology and history in 20th century art and disability studies. They’re also often asked to be present in debates, as moderators or as public voice
to represent the disabled community in the arts.

In ‘Hard Work Gentle Labour’ Josefien joined the collective from the beginning with great enthusiasm but with variable attendance due to their own agenda. They are showing a new work at the exhibition ‘The Way Of Care / Via Cura - 2022’. Next to that they were always very happy to share their skills in managing, planning, brainstorming and planning the collaboration and exhibition. They tried to help as much as possible with addressing diversity, accessibility and helped out with the audio tour for ‘Hard Work Gentle Labour’.