Since the early 1990s, Sylvie Fleury has created an essential contribution to the canon of feminist art, working withsculpture, performance, installation,painting and video. Engaging with the mechanics of materialistic desire, aesthetics and the construction of value, Fleury's works provide a humorous lens through which art history, gender, and consumerism. Fleury’s first exhibition of “shopping bag” installations in 1991 utilized shopping bags from designer brands as ready-made sculptures, highlighting the status symbol of the name on a bag that is devoid of contents—an empty space into which we project our desires. This began her ongoing exploration of the fetishization of luxury commodities and brands and the gendered patterns of the way we behave and perform. The surface—and what, if anything, lies beneath it—has formed an essential thread through Fleury’s work across sculpture, mixed-media, and performance, as she subverts the visual codes of consumerism and desire, via the things we buy, the media we consume, and the activities we undertake.

Fleury was born in Geneva in 1961 where she lives and works. Fleury has presented numerous solo exhibitions internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Yes To All, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2024; Turn me on, Pinacoteca Agnelli di Torino, Turin, Italy, 2024; Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, 2023; Aranya Art, Beidaihe, China, 2022; KunstraumDornbirn, Austria (2019); IstitutoSvizzero, Rome (2019); Villa Stuck, Munich (2016); Eternity Now, as part of the permanent collection at the Bass Museum, Miami (2017 and 2015); Centro de artecontemporaneo de Malága (2011); and MAMCO Genève (2008). Her work has also been presented in group shows internationally, including at the Daimler Contemporary, Berlin (2019); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2018); Kunsthaus Zürich (2018); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2016); SCHAUWERK Sindelfingen (2014); Kunstverein Hannover (2011); and Kunstverein Frankfurt (2011). In 2018 she was awarded Switzerland's Prix Meret Oppenheim and in 2015 received the Société des Arts de Genève Prize.