Video Essay 09’26“.
just listen is a video work in which I reflect on my experience of cancer and on the difficulty of turning illness into a coherent or meaningful narrative.
The film begins with a sustained close-up. I look directly into the camera until my expression slowly breaks and I begin to cry uncontrollably. A cut interrupts the moment. In the following time-lapse sequence my hair grows, is shaved, and my appearance gradually changes as the physical effects of treatment become visible.
The work then shifts into animation. A drawn figure—an alter ego—examines its own body, undresses, sheds its outer layer and dissolves into pulsating abstract forms that evoke both cellular processes and the passage of time. A rotating clock hand transforms into a drop that falls into a stand of infusion bags before disappearing.
A spoken monologue follows, reflecting on conversations surrounding my diagnosis and the projections, fears and expectations placed on illness. Rather than offering closure or redemption, the work resists the demand to extract meaning from suffering and instead foregrounds the unresolved nature of lived experience.
just listen premiered at Salon 2025, where it received the Prix Grand-Duc Adolphe 2025, and was subsequently acquired by MNAHA – Musée national d’archéologie, d’histoire et d’art.
During the Salon presentation, the video was accompanied by two related works:
Self-Questioning, a series of four self-portraits taken before the diagnosis, shortly after it, during treatment and after the most intensive phase of therapy;
and 22052025–23112023, a ready-made consisting of the port catheter once implanted in my body for chemotherapy. The title refers to the dates of implantation and removal. The price of the work corresponds exactly to the cost of the medication billed to my health insurance—an amount intended to be transferred, one-to-one, as a donation to cancer research at the University of Luxembourg.
Press articles about the work:
[EN] RTL today (10.11.2025)
Luxembourg artist Chantal Maquet turns illness into art.
[LU] Sonndesinterview vum Luc Marteling. RTL.lu (15.12.2025)
„D’Theema, dass ech Kriibs hunn oder dass ech Kriibs hat“
[DE] Interview. Daniel Conrad. Luxemburger Wort (04.02.2026)
Künstlerin Chantal Maquet: „Der Krebs definiert nicht meine Persönlichkeit“