Sophie Podolski: Wisdom Should be Sung

5 Jun-24 Aug 2025

Overview

Wisdom Should be Sung is the first solo exhibition of work by Sophie Podolski (b.1953–d.1974, BE) in the UK, and includes drawings, etchings, collages, archival materials, and texts from her phantasmagoric imaginary. A visionary poet, writer, and artist, Podolski’s body of work is remarkable for its volume – consisting of over three hundred drawings, graphic poems, and a novel, Le pays où tout est permis / The country where everything is permitted (1972) – especially given it was made across a tragically short time span of six years; Podolski took her own life at 21 having suffered from adolescence with schizophrenia.

Residing in Brussels but stateless, she was, from the age of 16, part of a vivid countercultural scene that centered on the Montfaucon Research Center (1968–73), a residence of five members – or as they described ‘freakies’, as opposed to the mass movement of hippies – united by the aesthetic aim to ‘overthrow the semantic order.’ Her impact on literature and culture was beyond her years and critically lauded for its formal innovation, feminist drive, and disrespect for the status quo, by figures such as Julia Kristeva, Roberto Bolaño, and members of Tel Quel avant-garde literary magazine who published extracts of her novel. She was however resolutely anti-intellectual and kept herself distanced from any attempts to distill her work into uniformity, freeing herself from the rules of spelling and syntax, which she perceived as a constraint, in favor of spontaneous writing, and rejecting fidelity to any one style.

In her work, writing and drawing are both forms of image-making, and a means through which to filter the world – with its hypocrisies, power structures, and hallucinatory vivacity – as she experienced it. Etchings, drawings and collages celebrate radical creative and personal freedom, exploring the ambiguity of definitions of sanity and society, and pursuing the pleasures of sexual liberation. Many are suffused with a pantheon of music and cultural figures of the time, from Antonin Artaud and Jean-Luc Godard, to Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix, who inform an intertextuality that Podolski remixes in her own delirious mythology.

Many works are tangibly influenced by substances that the group took to push the boundaries of human experience, with direct references to acid, speed and hashish. These were a facet of Podoloski’s wish to be psychically liberated, defy social conventions, and access ever deeper internal parts of herself to unearth the riches and darkness within. Her devotion to her work is palpable, through both the volume of her output, it’s incredible detail, and raw honesty. Brought together to display different exploratory modes of art making, the works powerfully convey her ambition to freely record and transmit ‘…the vibrations of a person over the course of her life.’

Her work was largely overlooked after her death, but has been restored to public attention in recent years, with a landmark exhibition at Wiels, Brussels, in 2018, and through the stewardship of the Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Château de Rochechouart, who now hold her work and archive through the donation of her friend and fellow artist at the Montfaucon Research Center, Joëlle de la Casinière.

This project is made possible thanks to the support of the Musée d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne Château de Rochechouart.

BIOGRAPHY

Sophie Podolski was born in Brussels in 1953, where she died in 1974. From 1968 to 1973 she was part of the Mountfaucon Research Center, a Brussels-based artist collective. In 1972 her book Le pays où tout est permis (The country where everything is permitted) which included her handwritten poems was published as a facsimile by the Montfaucon Research Center. In 1973, excerpts from Le pays où tout est permis were published in two issues of French avant-garde literary magazine Tel Quel. Art historian Marc Dachy published a special issue of his art magazine Luna Park, titled ‘Sophie Podolski Snow Queen’ (no. 6, 1980) which includes drawings and texts by Podolski. Previous solo exhibitions include WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, (2018) and Villa Vassilieff, Paris (2018). Selected group exhibitions include le Delta, Namur (2024/5); Raven Row, London (2024); Museé d’art contemporain de la Haute-Vienne, Rochechouart (2023); BPS22, Musée d’Art de la Province Hainaut, Charleroi (2022); Galerie nächst St. Stephan, Domgasse, Vienna (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Antwerp (2019); Casa Museo Murillo, Seville (1992); Museé d’Art Contemporain de Dunkerque (1991), Centre Beaunord, Paris (1990); Fondation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques (1980); Musée d’Art Moderne, Brussels (1977); Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels (1974).