PERFORMANCE

Nestor Benedini, B-Girl Badli Freeze, from the series ‘Breakin’Codes 2024’, 2024. The Cnap national fine arts centre collection.

Continuing the French state’s tradition of grand commissions within the realm of photography, the PERFORMANCE commission seeks to recognise and encourage the vitality of contemporary photographic creation within the French art scene.

In the context of the Cultural Olympiad, in 2022 the French Ministry of Culture entrusted to the Cnap national fine arts centre, in partnership with the Mrac Occitania regional museum of contemporary art and the CPM Marseille photography centre, a programme of commissions entitled PERFORMANCE.

Image creators of all persuasions, from photographic journalism and documentaries to the fine arts, were invited to explore this vast visual realm and to create unique works to be acquired by the Cnap for its collection. The productions are presented starting in 2024 by the Cnap’s partners, beginning with the Mrac Occitania, followed by the CPM Marseille, and finally the Claude Cahun Centre in Nantes from 5 February to 30 March 2025.

The dynamic relationships between imagery and sports are associated with the development of the notion of ‘performance’, omnipresent throughout society. How might today be figured the imperatives of competition and excellence, and the universal values promoted by the worldwide events that are the Olympic and Paralympic Games?

Representing sport differently, beyond the prisms habitually adopted by sports media and broadcasters, represents an ever-renewed challenge. For photography unbound by rules, it also constitutes a space of intersecting aesthetics, from visual communication to art, from reporting to pictures and paintings, from fashion to new urban cultures. This programme of commissions thus initiated the production of new images questioning the dissemination within society of an exigency for performance through the aesthetics of sport.

The PERFORMANCE artists’ resources of imagination and artistic invention allow us to approach sport differently, as a game and space of connections, negotiations and dialogues between beings.

At the same time, a joint Poursuite/Cnap publication presents this programme of commissions. Each artist was fully involved in the elaboration of this publication, by proposing the authors of their choice. Also, in collaboration with the graphic designer and photographer Grégoire Pujade Lorraine, the commissioned artists were able to recompose their projects within the space of the book’s pages.

To discover

Parallel programme

An off-site exhibition in the public space of Marseille, as well as screenings will be organised in connection with the exhibition.