Published on the occasion of the Special Prize of the Kiefer Hablitzel | Göhner Art Award 2025 awarded to Nelly Schaub and of the artist's eponymous exhibition at Kunsthaus Biel / Centre d'art Bienne (KBCB), Rebuts de refrain takes the form of a boxed publication bringing together drawings, photographs, texts, printed matter and a sound piece. Conceived by Nelly Schaub in collaboration with Philippa Schmitt and Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth, it extends the artist's project beyond the space and time of the exhibition.
Fully bilingual French/English, the publication combines drawings and photographs by the artist, exhibition photographs, and texts by Paul Bernard, Pauline Coquart, Kairaan Kika and Deborah-Joyce Holman, together with the first publication of McKenzie Wark's essay Trap Metaphysics in English and in French translation. Far from a conventional exhibition catalogue, the box assembles a set of printed components in varying formats—leporello, posters, booklets and magazine. Each copy contains a download card giving access to Nelly Schaub's sound piece I'm not dead (2026, 05:25).
An artist and musician, Nelly Schaub (born in 1995) works with performance, installation, video, poetry, drawing and music. Particularly influenced by a do-it-yourself aesthetic that stems from queer and countercultural heritage, Schaub's work evokes a wide range of emotions that are both dramatic and incongruous, moving between personal narratives and standardised ideals.
Edited by Nicolas Garait-Leavenworth and Laurent Schmid.
Contributions by McKenzie Wark, Pauline Coquart, Kairaan Kika, Deborah-Joyce Holman, Paul Bernard, Nelly Schaub.
Graphic design: Philippa Schmitt.
Published by activeRat with Kunsthaus Biel Centre d'art Bienne (KBCB).
