Your Empty Chair
2026
The morning after a loss is filled with a unique silence. It is a silence in which rooms breathe differently, in which objects begin to speak and light falls differently along the edge of a table. Your Empty Chair begins in this silence, in the moment when a life turns into traces: the crease in a pillow, the imprint of a shoe, a cup on a tray, an armchair lacking body warmth.
Julie Legouez approaches this void with careful precision. Her analogue photographs of the hospital where her grandmother was cared for do not depict a farewell drama; rather, they offer a sustained observation of transition. They document the space where care and institutional coldness are inextricably intertwined. These images are part of a historical tradition that extends from Jo Spence‘s radical documentation of her breast cancer to Nan Goldin‘s exploration of loss through photography, acknowledging that it can never be fully captured.
This exploration of traces continues in the photographs taken in the grandmother‘s apartment. Here, Legouez presents objects as sedimented time: garments, care products, furniture and cosmetic items. They are testimonies of a life inscribed into materials. The domestic space becomes an archive — intimate yet pointing beyond itself. This mode of visibility situates Legouez within a feminist tradition in which private experience is not treated as sentimental residue but as a politically significant site where structural power relations become legible, and accordingly, the political dimension of Your Empty Chair is clearly articulated.
The proposed abolition of Care Level 1 in Germany would affect around 860,000 people, highlighting how quickly individuals who depend on care can be reduced to a cost. In this context, Legouez draws on Joan Tronto’s theory of care, which views care work as the foundation of society and an area where inequalities are particularly evident.
Legouez‘s earlier work, such as the artist‘s book The Cure, in which domestic violence is analysed as a structural issue through a collection of documents, photographs and notes, already demonstrates her documentary-conceptual approach. This approach is evident again in ‘Your Empty Chair’, where evidence, fragments of memory, and open wounds are interwoven. In Legouez’s work, individuals become mirrors of social orders.
The exhibition presents photographs and objects that mark both farewell and transition. Taken together, they do not form a closed narrative, but rather a constellation of traces. Positioned between a hospital bed and a living room lamp, Legouez‘s work asserts that human life should not be reduced to a calculation or relativised.
Ultimately, unanswerable questions remain: What remains when a person leaves, and what does this say about those who remain? Above all: What do we owe to those whose chair has become empty, yet not meaningless?
Exhibition view
YOUR EMPTY CHAIR at Flutgraben e. V., Berlin, 2026
YOUR LAST WORDS
2025/2026
Hand-embroidered handkerchiefs from the artist's grandmother
You were lovely children.
Don't fight!
You shouldn't listen to others, only to yourself. That's what I always did.
They all praised me for the potato salad.
I could never show you how much I love you.
I'll never forget that.
Did you see how high the cat jumped? At least three meters!
That was terrible.
You don't need to worry.
I want you to be happy and joyful.
I want you to dance tomorrow.
You are so beautiful.
I would have loved to give them a kiss.
I pray that you will find happiness too.
I'll watch over you from up there.
Then I met my husband. He was my favorite man.
If I had known that was death, I wouldn't have been afraid
.
YOUR LAST DAYS
2025
analog photography on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, framed
35,6 x 30,6 cm
YOU LET ME KNOW WHEN SOMETHING COMES UP
2025
Sound, pressure chamber loudspeaker
0:57 min
I STILL FEEL YOUR LOVE. YOUR ARM IS AROUND MY SHOULDER.
2026
Video loop, tube television, aroma lamp, starry sky projector
0:59 min
YOUR LAST DAY (The puzzle you couldn't solve anymore)
2025
Crossword puzzle (Rheinische Post), framed
57 x 40 cm
PRESENT AND FUTURE
2026
Wallpaper
400 x 300 cm
WHAT REMAINS
2026
Grandmother's shoes, acrylic cover
40 x 40 cm
FOR YOU, THERE WAS TRUE LOVE
2026
Medical trolleys, bedside table, grandmother's pulp novels, Harlequin figure (gift from grandfather to grandmother), wedding photograph and photograph of grandparents' honeymoon, grandfather's magnifying glass, vase, bouquet of flowers
THE MEMORY OF YOUR MEMORY
2026
Medical folding screen, photo transfer
180 x 240 cm
YOUR EMPTY CHAIR
2025
analog photography on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, framed
32,3 x 28,5 cm
YOUR LAST WISH
2026
analog photography on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, framed, record player,
record (Bata Ilic: Dich erkenn’ ich mit verbundenen Augen)