Daria de Beauvais
© François Bouchon
Daria de Beauvais is an art historian, curator, writer and lecturer. Currently Senior Curator and Head of International Relations at the Palais de Tokyo, she has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions there, including recently: Raphaël Barontini (2025), Myriam Mihindou (2024), “Dislocations” (2024), “Doppelganger!” (2023), Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien (2023), “Reclaim the Earth” (2022), Mimosa Echard (2022), Jonathan Jones (2021), “Antibodies” (2020). She has participated in major contemporary art events, including the 15th Lyon Biennial (co-curator, 2019), 49th Rencontres d’Arles (guest curator, 2018), Nuit Blanche (associate curator, 2016), Expo Chicago (video section, 2016). She teaches exhibition practice in the Master “Exhibition Science and Techniques” at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University and is co-head with Morgan Labar of the seminar “Indigeneity, Hybridity, Anthropophagy” in the Arts department of the École normale supérieure (Paris).
The galleries attending the 2025 edition of Paris Gallery Weekend present a high-flying program, from which I have selected seven proposals:
Galerie Anne Barrault has given Carte blanche to the young Indian curator Skye Arundhati Thomas. She was co-curator of “Autohistorias”, a highly successful exhibition at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2024, as part of the “Artistes & Métiers de l’exposition” program. After publishing her biography at Presses du réel last year, she is now presenting an exhibition of Lalitha Lajmi (1932-2023), a self-taught Indian painter whose first retrospective only took place at the very end of her life, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai. As with many women artists, her work was recognized late in life.
After being represented by gb agency until its closure, Tirdad Hashemi has joined Christophe Gaillard, who is exhibiting their work for the first time. This Iranian artist is currently in residence with Soufia Erfanian (who also has an exhibition at the gallery) in Lens with the Pinault Collection. I had the opportunity to work with them on the group show “Dislocations” at the Palais de Tokyo in 2024 (co-curated with Marie-Laure Bernadac, in collaboration with the Portes ouvertes sur l’art association). Their work on the representation of bodies and plural identities is extremely powerful. There’s a kind of urgency to their practice, which explores the fault lines between isolation and elective communities.
Alison Saar, an American artist little known in France, is exhibiting at Galerie Lelong. She works on black female identity, and her influences are plural: Afro-American culture, Caribbean folklore and spirituality, mythology, folk art… She was invited to create the official sculpture for the Olympic Games, which can now be seen in the Jardin Charles Aznavour in the 8th arrondissement. Note that she is the daughter of Betye Saar, an artist absolutely worth (re)discovering. As for Galerie Lelong, I’m touched by its shared history with artists close to my heart, such as Louise Bourgeois and Ana Mendieta.
Curator Ana Mendoza Aldana has Carte blanche at Marcelle Alix. I’ve been following her practice linking art and literature with interest for several years. Her project “El Fantasma de Tennessee” is a group show on melancholy – a feeling widely explored in the history of art – based on three works by Tennessee Williams and their filmic adaptation. She invited eleven artists from different generations and cultures: Ella C Bernard, Cécile Bouffard, Omar Castillo Alfaro, Caroline Rose Curdy, Pierre Dumaire, Laura Huertas Millán, Liz Magor, Rafael Moreno, Nicole, Hatice Pinarbaşi and Jean-Charles de Quillacq. I know and appreciate the work of some, notably Liz Magor and Hatice Pinarbaşi, and look forward to discovering others.
Tai Shani, co-winner of the Turner Prize in 2019, presents her first exhibition in France thanks to a Carte blanche given by galerie Suzanne Tarasiève to curator Camille Bréchignac. The British artist’s multidisciplinary practice, which includes performance, film, photography and installation, revolves around experimental narrative texts. Drawing on punk rock, underground cinema, Greek mythology, feminist theory, occultism and science fiction, Tai Shani imagines dark, fantastical worlds on the edge of the grotesque and the gothic. Here, she presents works linking anatomy and architecture, in an anthropomorphic vision of the world.
Jocelyn Wolff has represented Diego Bianchi for some ten years. For his new exhibition at the gallery, the Argentine artist presents a series of frozen, latent scenes. He often works with found objects, drawing attention to the excesses of consumer society. His hybrid sculptures, full of ramifications and sometimes evoking human organs or limbs, retain a form of ambiguity, even opacity, in the face of attempts at interpretation. Adapting, readjusting and deviating are among his preferred gestures, in order to bring about the unexpected – as is taking the viewer, as well as himself, out of his comfort zone.
I conclude with Galerie Zlotowski, which specializes in twentieth-century avant-garde. It’s also an emotional choice, as I worked there over twenty years ago. Carte blanche has been given to Cécilia Becanovic, for a group show with the beautiful title “Chevaliers errantes”, a dialogue between modern and contemporary artists: Pierrette Bloch, Ella Bergmann-Michel, Louise Bourgeois, Anne-Lise Coste (Uruk), Sonia Delaunay, Jochen Lempert, Sol Lewitt, Vera Molnar, Anthony Plasse, Helen Mirra, Kurt Schwitters, Georges Valmier, Arnaud Vasseux, Josselin Vidalenc and Zohreh Zavareh. I’m interested in this vision of the crusading artist, like the knights errant of the Middle Ages setting out alone to realize their ideals.
- Daria de Beauvais
You can also discover Daria de Beauvais’ favorites on video:
Ses recommandations
-
Galerie Anne Barrault
Lalitha Lajmi , India
- Asian Art Scene
- Carte blanche
- Contemporary Art
- First Solo Exhibition
- Painting
- Women Artists
-
Galerie Christophe Gaillard
Tirdad Hashemi , Iran
"Butchered Bodies"
- Asian Art Scene
- Contemporary Art
- LGBTQ+
- Painting
-
Galerie Lelong
Alison Saar , United States
"Sweet Life"
- Contemporary Art
- First Solo Exhibition
- Painting
- Sculpture
- Women Artists
-
Marcelle Alix
Ella C Bernard, Cécile Bouffard, Omar Castillo Alfaro, Caroline Rose Curdy, Pierre Dumaire, Laura Huertas Millán, Liz Magor, Rafael Moreno, Nicole, Hatice Pinarbaşi et Jean-Charles de Quillacq
--
"El fantasma de Tennessee"
- Activism Art
- Carte blanche
- Contemporary Art
- Latin America's Art Scene
- LGBTQ+
- Women Artists
-
Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve
Carte blanche à Camille Bréchignac
--
Tai Shani , England
- Carte blanche
- Contemporary Art
- Installation
- Sculpture
- Women Artists
-
Galerie Jocelyn Wolff
Diego Bianchi , Argentina
"ThéâtrEErreuR"
- Art contemporain
- Contemporary Art
- Installation
- Latin America's Art Scene
- Sculpture
-
Galerie Zlotowski
Pierrette Bloch, Ella Bergmann-Michel, Louise Bourgeois, Anne-Lise Coste (Uruk), Sonia Delaunay, Jochen Lempert, Sol Lewitt, Vera Molnar, Anthony Plasse, Helen Mirra, Kurt Schwitters, Georges Valmier, Arnaud Vasseux, Josselin Vidalenc, Zohreh Zavareh
--
"chevaliers errantes"
- Contemporary Art
- Drawing
- Modern Art
- Sculpture
- Women Artists
- Works on paper