"My work in video actually comes from photography, with particular attention paid to the frame, to the shot." Eugénie Touzé
For its second participation in the PhotoSaintGermain Festival, the Fondation LAccolade presents the work of artist Eugénie Touzé. Invited on a residency at the NIROX Foundation in South Africa, this photographer and video artist, a graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, immersed herself in the region known as the "Cradle of Humankind."
The title of the exhibition emphasizes the artist's discovery of a place at the origin of human existence - a new environment, born anew in her eyes and ears. How, then, can the camera's eye translate first impressions of unfamiliar, wild flora and fauna, while escaping the lingering traces of stereotype, exoticism, and anthropocentrism?
Eugénie Touzé uses her cameras to capture the intensity of the moment. Through fixed shots and tight framing, she captures the infinity of space-time embedded in every movement, every shift in light, every silence broken by a murmur - that of human activity, never truly absent. Three films and a series of photographs recount this encounter, this close physical engagement with the place, the mother earth, and all who inhabit it.
For the PhotoSaintGermain Festival, these works take over the walls of the Foundation’s residency apartment, transforming it into a vessel of vital energy. Eugénie Touzé enacts "presences," in the plural, reflecting the viewer back onto their own ghosts, in a nostalgic introspection of their animal nature.
Fondation LAccolade
The Fondation LAccolade – Institut de France is dedicated to supporting, promoting, and fostering artistic creation. It backs projects related to the environment, the fragility of living things, water, the feminine, and matrimonial heritage, through research and creative residencies located in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The Foundation cultivates exchanges with comparable partner residencies in France and abroad. It also initiates exhibitions in Paris and California and provides patronage support for artists and nonprofit organizations.