November 2024

In Campus Stellae, De Ruggiero demonstrates his ability to turn photography into a performative act, capturing the complexity of human experience in moments of despair, resilience, and tenderness. This exhibition transcends the personal narrative to explore universal themes of destiny, choice, and the ever-present tension between breaking free and being bound by forces beyond our control— just as stars, in their vastness, can both guide and imprison.

On November 28, 2022, I set off on a 1,550 km journey with a fifteen-year-old boy, S., who was at a critical turning point in his life. This was his last chance at reintegration before being placed in a juvenile detention center. With a really small daily budget, we ventured through challenging terrains—from raging rivers to snow-covered mountains—in the heart of winter, spending Christmas and New Year’s on the trail. The young man was informed that, if he wished, he could stop this experience at any time and return to his previous situation. This path was a literal crossroads—either continue walking or face the consequences of a troubled past. Like many young people marked by difficult life experiences, S. had lived through his own tragedies, and this journey was one of his last chances to break free from them. The journey tested both of us. It was a closed emotional space—90 days of sharing the physical and mental load of such an intense experience. My feet bled during the journey, and I fought against feelings of loneliness and sadness. In this place of despair, I discovered a confusing tenderness, a way to overcome personal experiences, and connect to a greater understanding of life’s forces. Photography became a way to capture not only moments of despair but also the resilience and strength that emerged from these challenges. And I learned that giving and receiving are deeply intertwined: while I documented his battle, I was also profoundly changed by the experience. The legal constraints around photographing a minor under judicial supervision were complex. While the law requires written consent for the use of a detainee’s image, it does not grant them absolute control over that image. For the Protection Judiciary of Youth, who had S. under their legal protection, his identity had to be erased, his face blurred, even with written consent from his family. Yet for me, photographing him was about reclaiming his right to be represented. It was about allowing him to see himself, not as a case number or a blurred figure, but as a person with agency. It is essential to note that my goal is not to highlight the young man’s personal story. I am aware of the stakes of protection and confidentiality surrounding minors, and I took all necessary measures to ensure his rights were respected. Getting approval to share S.’s face in the photographs was a long process, requiring months of back-and-forth with institutions and legal guardians. Over a year passed before I was able to bring these images to the public. Today, I continue to document S.’s journey as he transitions back to everyday life, beyond the extraordinary pilgrimage we shared. The next chapter of this project will focus on his passage into adulthood, grappling with the uncertainty of a world where stability can feel unreachable, and where fate—like the stars—sometimes seems both guiding and imprisoning.

October 2024

September 2024

"Sacred Wound" invites us to explore the vibrant faubourg of osu, nestled within the bustling city of accra, ghana. Fascinated by spirits and rituals, James delves into how myths and personal beliefs shape the daily lives of osu's inhabitants, serving as sources of power, hope, and sometimes despair. His debut art show in paris offers a glimpse into a world where time seems to stand still, blending the spiritual with the mundane and revealing the mystical within everyday life.

May 2024

« HOW WAS YOUR DREAM ? » is a photographic project realised during the Hong Kong protests between June and October 2019. This work deals with new forms of demonstration and insurrection in the post-contemporary era dominated by seamless control societies. Five years before, in Hong Kong, the « Umbrella Movement » was quickly repressed by state and police violence. In 2019, the democratic uprising that began in May gave itself the means to continue. Faced with a sophisticated arsenal of control (facial recognition, geolocation, carding, eavesdropping, infiltration, water cannons, tear gas, helicopter, sonic weapons, non-lethal rifles), the Hong Kong demonstrators developed a repertoire of techniques based on principles of invisibility and intraceability (anonymity, lasers of blindness, pocket of Faraday, vision by drones, masks of all kinds, encrypted communication, etc.), allowing them to mitigate the effects of the repression.

The link between the raw information and the environment can create ambiguous content whose informative value can appear «corrupted». In response to these concerns, this project is part of a strong desire to provide a strictly visual testimony, in an artistic approach, including hangings and edition. The project aims to stand out from the classic representation of these events and bring a new perspective to the viewer. This project has received recognition from various prestigious awards, including the Swiss Design Awards 2023, the 7L Photography Grand Jury Prize of the villa Noailles, and the Photographic Prize of the AOYF Foundation Geneva. These accolades highlight its relevance and impact in the contemporary discourse on social movements and the power dynamics of control and resistance.

November 2023

If there’s space I’ll stay, if there’s time I’ll sing is a collective exhibition that brings together narratives of artists who create work that chooses Armenia as both a physical and a cultural setting. An ever-fragmented portrait of this transitory space unfolds in photographs, poetry, and an object and a sound piece. Rather than try to encompass the totality of the country’s rich cultural heritage, this exhibition is an artistic reflection of selected realities that evolve within a broader historical legacy.

September 2023

Self-taught tymur postovyї began paintings as a reflection one identity, inadequacy and protest within the realities of contemporary Ukraine. His practice started by intervening in the streets with large-scale abstract graffitis, and evolved into painting and sculpture loaded with unique symbolism, moving between the conscious and the subconscious, madness and anticipation, urban landscapes and the natural world. Overripe, past. expiration date, is it something to drop or to take along, as fertilised for new grounds?

May 2023

The series features Paravina–acting as both muse and make-up artist – in a series of hauntingly beautiful and surreal scenes, set in the otherworldly landscapes of the Canary Islands. In her use of color as an object of experimentation, along with her choice to mix natural light with contemporary lighting technology, Porodina creates a world of mythical sirens that allures and unsettles. Both Paravina and the island of Fuerteventura are the principal characters in the story these photos tell, acting as portals to a dimension unknown. Huddart's styling work demonstrates a keen and sensitive eye for fashion and her ability to build character, adding shades of mystical glamor to the ethereal and rugged environment through experimental garments and heavy vintage jewelry, all while maintaining the silence of a natural scene. Through this collaboration, Paravina evokes grace with fragile power, rooting femininity as an equal with the sand, the rock, the sea.

April 2023

March 2023

The exhibition «La Plaine» brings together Andrey Zouari's most recent work. On show are paintings and an intimate archive of drawings and research, asking the question of an imaginative survival and how the future might be reinvented. It invites the viewer to take ownership of the sketches, the "traces" of an artistic research project and to embrace this ideal plain through an intimate encounter with its various inhabitants.

Sound design by Polocorp & Hèran Soun

March 2023

December 2022

November 2022

September 2022

Fraught with social, cultural and political connotations, Identity is the medium through which we express and adopt signifiers. It’s that funny thing that acts as a connective tissue, joining us as particular individuals to the general or universal. It’s the question “Where are you from?” met with pause, and more pause. There are those who answer with conviction, while there are others who answer differently each time, but all of us speak of iden- tity with our mouths full.

What follows? Is our relationship to our identities a mix of pride, estrangement or shame? We could brandish our signs like hearts on our sleeves, or they are the com- fort blanket that helps us to sleep well at night. We let others tie us up neatly up in a bow, sticky package label slapped on, hard to shirk. In strange ways, we find ourselves straying far from our roots, living in radically foreign places, just to inculcate a sense of longing; perhaps to long is part of what it means to belong, or at least more than we tend to think.

Featuring: Chan Wai Kwong, Stefan Dotter, Lena C Emery, Bennie Gay, Takashi Homma, Zhong Lin, Sakiko Nomura, Stephane Sed- naoui, Charlotte Stouvenot and Osamu Yokonami.

September 2022

The work is a collaboration between both Brazilian artists, focusing on the Tupinambá cape, an ancestral and sacred feather ornament that was made and used by native Brazilians until the 16th century, and revisited by Glicéria from the early 2000s.