Pays des merveilles by Nanténé Traoré at MEP
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Open30 Sep - 29 Nov 2026
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Author
- Location Paris, France
the MEP presents the first monographic museum exhibition dedicated to Nanténé Traoré. Through a vivid exploration of intimate imagery, his work offers a meditation on memory, attachment and disappearance.
Overview
Nanténé Traoré’s return to the Breton coast, a place he had visited as a child with his mother, brought traumatic memories back to the surface and marked the beginning of a period of profound depression and dissociation. Made using expired film stock dating from the 1990s, these images convey a state of disorientation in which reality seems to slip away. The film’s chemical alterations transform colours, blur contours and produce unstable, almost ghostly visions.
In this landscape shaped by memory, his walks become a way of redirecting his attention towards the surrounding world and the elements that compose it: shorelines, birds, stray dogs, and familiar sleeping figures. His gaze settles on the fragile beauty of beings and places destined to fade away.
Bathed in hazy blue and orange light, the images blur the boundaries between forms: bodies become landscapes, and landscapes become reflections 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 memory-filled drift.
Curated by Victoria Aresheva, the exhibition brings together a new analogue photographic project, created in Brittany in the summer of 2025, as well as a film made during a residency in Albania in the summer of 2026.
About The Artist
Nanténé Traoré (born 1993, Paris) is an artist and writer who lives and works between Brussels and Paris. He is represented by Galerie Sultana (Paris). His photographic work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Prix Découvertes at the Rencontres de la photographie d’Arles (2024), at Air de Paris in Romainville (2024), at Le Lieu Unique with the FRAC Pays de la Loire in Nantes (2024), and at Magasins Généraux in Pantin (2022).
Traoré’s work has received several awards, including the Prix Utopie, and has been shortlisted for the Prix Reiffers Initiatives, Paris (2025) and the Prix Découverte at the Rencontres d’Arles and the Prix Mentor. His works are held in the collections of the CNAP.
