Jo Bones is not a cynic with a bitter grin but a dreamer with a sharp eye. Her layered humor does not cut; it dissects. Starting from her own vulnerability, she observes humanity — a being full of contradictions, always balancing between authenticity and a constructed mirror image.

Bones is also a shaman. She feeds herself the poison of the Anthropocene, chews on it, and regurgitates it in her creations. Her inner world filled with hallucinations that swirl like fireflies — fragments of a fictional reality search constantly for a tangible form. This kaleidoscopic expedition into human nature ultimately gives birth to her oeuvre. Every hair on the skin of this most wondrous mammal is examined, plucked, cared for, and reimplanted with poetic precision. Not to improve, but to offer a different perspective. Let’s see it this way.

In broad daylight, she searches with a lantern for the human. She goes beyond the classical research by Diogenes, following a gut feeling free of shame, seeking the measurability of love, humanity, and empathy. As the custodian of a forgotten ideal — the human as hairy, and unhygienic animal — she traverses everyday reality with a portable scale. On one side, she places the whims of the clinical human; on the other, she weighs it against gold leaf. For Bones, gold leaf is a metaphor for the value of appearances. The results are artworks like Mouton noir or À Poil.

In this exhibition, Bones shows us how we lose ourselves in an obsession with perfection. She reminds us that being human also means letting go — failing, crying, and digesting. The engineered human, the hybrid superhuman of the future — half human, half machine — is stripped, and Bones places herself next to it: insignificant, naked, vulnerable, questioning: à poil.

The exhibition is a gentle conversation without conflict. The artist and the human look at each other. They smile and caress each other. They might even love each other. But somewhere within that tender recognition, melancholy lingers, along with the question: For how much longer ? How much longer will this fairytale last ?

Jo Bones // Instagram