Lea Sblandano and Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer at L'Appartement - Espace Images Vevey

For its 12th series of exhibitions, L’Appartement–Espace Images Vevey splits in two. On one side, digital experimentation, avatars, and connected emotions. On the other, the rigour of the laboratory, academic thought, and material memory.

Overview

One side hosts Lea Sblandano, prize recipient of the 2024 IMAGES VEVEY × ECAL Award, who presents Neijuan, an installation exploring identities in flux, where reality slides into the virtual.
The other side features Nova by Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, a duo rephotographing scientific objects turned into poetic artefacts. Two complementary approaches, confronting past and future, the tangible and the timeless, poetry and fantasy, each in their own way questioning how we see, know, and project ourselves into the world.

With their installation Nova, Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer take over the three rooms of L’Appartement with images from their evolving photographic series. Since 2009, they have documented scientific, historical, or educational artefacts, removed from contextand reimagined. The first room shows customs-confiscated objects, displayed as curiosities stripped of their original meaning. The second invokes the artists’ studio, bringing together academic models, books, and prism photographs. The third presents vanished museum pieces, cut out and turned into shadows of the past. The hallway features striking images manipulated physically and digitally. Like the sudden flare of an invisible star, Nova forms a fictional, domestic museum where the image acts as a fragment of memory.

Neijuan, a Chinese slang term meaning “involution”, describes a retreat into oneself, a symptom of a society growing ever faster and more competitive, where youth oscillates between adulthood and stagnation. Through a documentary and collaborative approach, Lea Sblandano follows people she met online, in forums, video games, or chat rooms. These virtual spaces become arenas of transformation where alternative identities emerge beyond physical norms. In Le Couloir, she introduces this shifting world through photographs that blend portraits and urban landscapes, alternating fragments of reality and staged scenes. Both intimate and confined, the space acts as a threshold between two realms, opening windows onto the outside while initiating immersion into the fascinating universe of Neijuan.