Hosted by Section7Books in Paris, we are delighted to launch a collection of the essential writings by artist Julie Béna from 2012 up to the present day, titled "It Needed to be Tender and to be Whipped"

Béna's practice mostly enfolds in performance and sculpture. However, this collection of poems, essays, film and theater scripts wind around her visual art work. The reader navigates through these various forms, and finds them situated against the different places where she wrote them, bearing witness to the inspiration that each locale offers Béna's multi-layered experience. The scope of expression found in Béna's use of language demonstrates how relationships form between an artist’s writing and their other practices.
 
            Julie Béna’s art and poetry offer the profundity of a sphinxian riddle. She fosters a dream-like state that blends freewheeling imagination with a vintage pop culture sensibility. The results are dislocated from references to the culture of a specific time or place, but are evocative and enchanting nonetheless. Béna’s biography is so full of whimsy and fantasy that it seems as if it could have been an unfilmed screenplay. 
(Daniel Palmer, curator, art historian)