Nanténé Traoré — pays des merveilles

Maison Européenne de la Photographie

From September 30 to November 29, 2026, MEP Studio hosts pays des merveilles, the first monographic museum exhibition of Nanténé Traoré. Through a living iconography of intimacy, his work offers a meditation on memory, attachment, and disappearance. Nanténé Traoré's return to the Breton coast, which he frequented as a child with his mother, brings back traumatic memories and marks the beginning of a period of profound depression and dissociation. Made from expired film stock dating from the 1990s, the images convey this troubled state in which reality seems to slip away. The chemical alterations of the film modify the colors, blur the contours, and produce unstable, almost ghostly visions. In this landscape inhabited by memories, walks become a way of shifting his attention toward the world around him and what constitutes it: the shores, the birds, stray dogs, or familiar sleeping silhouettes. His gaze settles on the fragile beauty of beings and places destined for erasure. Crossed by vaporous lights, blue or orange, the images blur the boundaries between forms: bodies become landscapes, and landscapes become the reflection of inner states. The film extends this experience of dissolution: a fixed shot of a landscape is accompanied by the artist's inner voice, guiding us into the heart of this sensitive and memorial drift. The exhibition brings together a new analog photographic project, made in Bretagne in summer 2025, as well as a film shot during a residency in Albanie in summer 2026.

Source: Paris Open Data ↗