Deborah de Robertis, the rebel who transforms art into an act of resistance

In an art world still structured by persistent power dynamics, Déborah de Robertis stands out as a radical, free, and profoundly necessary figure. Through her performances, this Franco-Luxembourgish artist (of Italian origin), this rebel who transforms art into an act of resistance, does not seek to please or conform to established codes: she shatters them. Her work is part of a direct struggle against the mechanisms of power, the imposed silences, and the systemic violence that permeate the art world.

From the outset, she has championed an inherently political practice. Her body becomes a medium, a tool for direct confrontation with patriarchal structures. Where art history has often reduced the female body to an object of contemplation, Deborah de Robertis transforms it into an active subject, a force for denunciation. Her performance Mirror of Origin, staged in 2014 at the Musée d'Orsay, marked a decisive turning point by restoring presence and voice to a historically erased female figure.

But his commitment goes beyond the symbolic. It is rooted in personal experience and a desire to bring to light truths that have long been suppressed. In 2026, following a report, a preliminary investigation was opened by the police station in Paris's 17th arrondissement. His lawyer, Marie Dosé, confirmed the filing of a complaint for rape and sexual assault against three figures in the art world: Juan D'Oultremont, François Odermatt, and Bernard Marcadé. Through this action, the artist grounds his struggle in legal reality, rejecting any form of silence.

At the NRW Forum, a performance that exposes the invisible

Her recent performance in Düsseldorf, at the NRW Forum as part of the Sex Now exhibition on March 28, follows this same line of thought. Entitled This Is Not Rape, a reference to Magritte, it takes the form of a reenactment of an abuse she experienced. On stage, a performer, Marcus Kreiss, embodies an exhibition curator through a transformation using special effects. The unsimulated, deliberately frontal digital penetration aims to make visible what is usually concealed.

The performance was abruptly interrupted by security guards, who covered the stage with sheets before the police arrived. The artists were summoned to court. The institution, for its part, denied Déborah de Robertis's participation in the exhibition to the authorities, despite curator Alain Bieber's earlier recognition of her work as emblematic of the #MeToo movement. This situation, according to the artist, highlights a blatant contradiction between progressive rhetoric and censorship practices.

In this confrontation, Deborah de Robertis denounces an accepted institutional violence. She questions an art world that, according to her, remains one of the last spaces to maintain a kind of post-#MeToo code of silence. For the artist, there is a direct link between the silencing of violence and the invisibility of works produced by women. The control exerted over artistic careers then becomes a lever of control over bodies themselves.

Transforming OnlyFans into a contemporary art gallery

When contacted by Entrevue, Deborah de Robertis acknowledged her deliberate subversion of the OnlyFans platform. She explained that, as a young artist, she faced power dynamics where certain men in positions of authority exploited her economic vulnerability to exert control over her body and her career. According to her, this system, still largely structured by predatory practices, weakens female artists and fosters insidious forms of control.

Today, she claims to be reversing this power dynamic by using OnlyFans as a space for reappropriation. More than simply displaying the body, she presents images and videos conceived as political acts, aiming to denounce abuses and reveal the power structures at work in the art world. Behind an apparent erotic dimension, her work is rooted in a logic of confrontation and symbolic reappropriation, where she asserts her autonomy and redefines the rules of perception.

The artist, however, emphasizes the limitations of the system: OnlyFans adheres to specific codes, often dictated by market forces and male expectations. Refusing to conform also means foregoing immediate profitability. Her project therefore remains, for the time being, primarily conceptual and constantly evolving. She also points out that certain subjects, such as violence or abuse, are themselves subject to forms of censorship, again requiring strategies to circumvent them.

New images and videos will soon enrich this work, in a desire to continue this exploration of the relationships between body, power, censorship and representation.

Create to survive, create to denounce

His most recent work also utilizes artificial intelligence as a tool for reconstruction. Through a series entitled Rape TapesThe artist uses these technologies to reconstruct her traumatic memories from real-life elements. Two of the three videos in this series were created using AI. While some exploit these tools to generate forms of digital violence, she repurposes them as a tool for reclaiming the experience, reversing the perspective to reveal that of the aggressor and expose the mechanisms of domination.

This video from that era is the only one in the series that doesn't use artificial intelligence, a deliberate choice that fuels the ambiguity sought by the artist. The man who appears in it, intentionally pixelated with a reworked voice, filed a lawsuit in 2024 for invasion of privacy. This reaction follows the broadcast of an old videoThis refers to the period when she met BM, when she was 26 years old, although the video was filmed several years later. In this recording, the man made explicit remarks that the artist now quotes to contextualize her work and denounce certain practices.

One element further reinforces the symbolic significance of this act: the artwork she stole from the exhibition he curated, entitled "I Think Therefore I Suck" by Annette Messager. Hanging in her home and visible in the video, this piece allowed the artist to identify her. Through this gesture, Déborah de Robertis forges a link between personal memory, institutional critique, and artistic appropriation, making this sequence a point of convergence between lived experience, evidence, and creation.

The artistic creation, blending live performance and video, asserts itself as an act of absolute defiance. Déborah de Robertis forcefully affirms that, while men in power may have been able to exert control over women, they will not succeed in destroying the artist. Through her work, she imposes a voice, a presence, and a struggle that redefine the contours of contemporary art and remind us that creation can also be an act of survival and justice.

His Instagram account