To mark the 14th edition of the Talents Contemporains competition, the exhibition *Traversées* brings together the seven winning artists who use water as a setting for journey, resistance, and memory.
The exhibition begins with a listening experience of Enrique Ramírez’s *Elegías a un paisaje*, a sound sculpture that draws on pre-Columbian knowledge to give voice to water and air. Matter then takes on a mineral quality in the work of Ladislas Combeuil, whose 45 canvases in *Mes petites fenêtres* allow the paint to create silent horizons of its own accord. The immersive experience continues with Éléonore Geissler’s *Le plus vieux film du monde*, a hybrid installation that transforms an aquarium and its prehistoric coelacanth into a veritable optical theater. The gaze drifts toward the waters of the Caspian Sea with Mehrali’s *Raw Reverie*, which captures the force of the waves in cyanotype to rekindle childhood memories. Then, Alioune Diagne’s vibrant canvas *Géeju Neefare - Plastic Sea* lends the exhibition a geopolitical dimension, denouncing plastic pollution and the forced exile of Senegalese fishing communities.
The exhibition begins with a listening experience of Enrique Ramírez’s *Elegías a un paisaje*, a sound sculpture that draws on pre-Columbian knowledge to give voice to water and air. Matter then takes on a mineral quality in the work of Ladislas Combeuil, whose 45 canvases in *Mes petites fenêtres* allow the paint to create silent horizons of its own accord. The immersive experience continues with Éléonore Geissler’s *Le plus vieux film du monde*, a hybrid installation that transforms an aquarium and its prehistoric coelacanth into a veritable optical theater. The gaze drifts toward the waters of the Caspian Sea with Mehrali’s *Raw Reverie*, which captures the force of the waves in cyanotype to rekindle childhood memories. Then, Alioune Diagne’s vibrant canvas *Géeju Neefare - Plastic Sea* lends the exhibition a geopolitical dimension, denouncing plastic pollution and the forced exile of Senegalese fishing communities.
Julie Bourges then presents "Les eaux-fortes", a visual narrative comprising seven photographs in which the daily life of a woman whose husband is a fisherman becomes a quest for emancipation in the face of the sea. Finally, Paul Heintz brings the exhibition to a close with "Nafura", a nocturnal urban journey through Saudi Arabia in which three women drive through Jeddah to enjoy a moment of freedom from social norms.
