IN-DEPENDANCE by IBASHO presents 'The Feminine Gaze', a group exhibition bringing together four distinctive voices in contemporary photography: Lisen Stibeck, Birgit Graschopf, Ingrid Dorner and Florence D’Elle. As dreamers, artists and explorers, they poetically explore themes such as attentiveness, care and creativity.
The ‘female’ or ‘feminine gaze’ proposes a different way of seeing, without taking the male perspective as the standard. More than an aesthetic, the feminine gaze is a perspective that asks not only what we see, but also through whose eyes we are looking.
In ‘Un Conte’, Belgian artist and self-taught author-photographer Florence D’Elle draws on a deeply personal story, embracing the slowness and materiality of large-format photography and the collodion process. Through self-portraits and images of her daughter, she explores the place of women within the symbolic world of fairy tales, drawing on a past that is dreamlike, silent and luminous, yet also marked by violence. Inspired by the magical worlds of Jean Cocteau and Jane Campion, D’Elle creates a dreamlike universe in which gestures and motifs offer access to an alternative reality. The imperfections of the collodion process are an essential part of her visual language, lending the photographs an organic, sensual and timeless quality. Each individual photograph suggests its own story, yet together they form an intergenerational narrative in which memory, imagination and personal history become intertwined. To coincide with the exhibition, D’Elle presents Opprinnelsen, a book resulting from her artist residency at the Sunnhordland Museum on the Norwegian island of Halsnøy.
The French, Munich-based artist Ingrid Dorner is known for her evocative photographic work influenced by Surrealism. For the exhibition, Dorner presents works from three series: ‘Zimmer 23’, ‘Liminal’ and ‘Merveille’. These series represent different stages of the same journey: from an inner space, through a process of transformation, towards the emergence of new possibilities. ‘Zimmer 23’ depicts an inner space. The room becomes both a physical and psychological place, where time seems to stand still. ‘Liminal’ occupies the threshold: the moment when something is no longer what it once was, yet has not become something else. Here, time, chemistry and manipulation intervene directly in the photographic material. Transformation is not merely depicted but physically takes place within the image through the technique of mordançage. ‘Merveille’, in turn, marks a tentative opening. Not by erasing what came before or offering a simple resolution, but by creating space for the fragile return of movement and imagination. Together, the three series trace a transition towards the possibility of seeing the world differently. The images emerge from Dorner’s intimate, lived experience of her daughter’s illness. Rather than approaching the body from the outside as an object to be observed, she explores it from within: as a sensitive landscape that perceives, remembers, changes and imagines. During the exhibition, Dorner will present her recently published book ‘Liminal’, published by Hopper&Fuchs.
Vienna-based artist Birgit Graschopf creates mysterious, sometimes playful staged scenes in which female figures invariably take centre stage, revealing the inner worlds of her subjects. With references to Romanticism and Surrealism, her visual language moves between the familiar and intimate on the one hand, and the strange and mysterious on the other. Graschopf often partially hand-colours her black-and-white photographs. She also manually applies photographic emulsion to sandpaper or self-cast concrete. This approach lends her photographs, presented under the title Still/Silence (2022–2026), a painterly quality that contributes significantly to their distinctive visual language.
Swedish photographer and artist Lisen Stibeck explores the identity of young people and the inner landscape of the human psyche. Working with dreams and archetypes, she imbues her images with a sense of magical realism. For ‘The Feminine Gaze,’ Stibeck presents ‘A Quiet Distance’, a series about transformation that moves between the inner and outer worlds, between presence and disappearance. In this project, Stibeck explores how the feminine gaze can experience change as something lived, intuitive and embodied, rather than as a clearly defined event. The title refers to the space between what is seen and what is felt, a quiet awareness that precedes change. The work invites a slower way of looking: a gaze that listens rather than merely observes, and feels rather than defines.
‘The Feminine Gaze’ exhibition opens on Saturday 31 October at 4 pm with an opening drink and runs until 20 December 2026. All four artists will be present at the opening for a meet and greet.
Vernissage: Saturday 31 October 2026, 4–8 pm
Regular opening hours: Thursday–Sunday, 2–6 pm, or by appointment
Waalsekaai 59
2000 Antwerp, Belgium
