Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve

Camille Bréchignac is a curator and art theorist. She began her career in London, where she served as the “Associate Curator” at Kunstraum, a project space focused on performance and interdisciplinary practices. During this period, she also carried out several independent projects and worked in the Photography Department at Tate Modern, assisting Emma Lewis with the Dora Maar exhibition. She then moved to Paris, where she continued to nurture her independent practice, notably with an exhibition project with Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien and several projects with Josèfa Ntjam. She later joined Galerie Poggi, where she held the position of Associate Director for 4 years. At the gallery, she integrated Ittah Yoda, Josèfa Ntjam, and Darío Villalba into the program and invited several artists, such as Hugo Servanin and Cecilia Granara, to create parallel projects. She is now leading several projects related to speculative practices and radical imagination.

Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Tai Shani in its Project Room, a proposal by Camille Bréchignac, who has been given a curatorial carte blanche.

Winner of the prestigious Turner Prize in 2019, alongside Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, and Oscar Murillo, Tai Shani has established herself as one of the most influential and innovative artists of her generation in the UK. However, her work remains relatively unknown in France, where it has been rarely exhibited, with the exception of a specific commission for the foyer of Lafayette Anticipations during the Échelle Humaine Festival in 2023.

Known for her multidisciplinary practice combining installations, films, performances, and texts, Tai Shani summons historical, mythological, and literary figures to create a visual and narrative universe that is both grotesque, kitsch, and gothic.

The exhibition at Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve will feature key elements from her recent show at the Cosmic House in 2024. In that exhibition, Tai Shani explored the mimesis between the body and architecture, transforming the Cosmic House into an organic extension of human anatomy. Each element of her installation embodies a part of the body: the sculptures evoke limbs or organs, the paintings and prints suggest skin textures or blood flow, while the architectural spaces become metaphors for cavities or internal structures. This anthropomorphic approach recalls historical references such as the houses of Carlo Mollino, Dalí’s Pavilion of Venus, or the castles of Ludwig II of Bavaria, where architecture mirrors the intimate and biological. It also draws from an enduring imaginary of the monster, whose different body parts are animated by a divine breath—from Prometheus creating humanity from water and earth to Frankenstein.

According to Camille Bréchignac, curator of the exhibition: “Tai Shani’s work is a precursor to an entire generation of artists emerging today, using fiction and speculation as means to reimagine our social and political structures. Her use of worldbuilding, the invocation of classical or even archaic figures, and her use of a rich aesthetic vocabulary since 2010 have created a radical break that must be honored and analyzed today. It is a great opportunity to present her work in Paris, and for visitors to discover it in such an intimate context as a Project Room.”

This exhibition is part of the Paris Gallery Weekend, offering a unique opportunity to discover or rediscover the work of this major artist in a Parisian setting.