Après l'Éclipse

Zine Andrieu, born 1998, lives and works in Marseille.

Zine Andrieu’s work depicts cultural shocks through installations, objects, performances, videos, sound pieces and 3D environments. Representing the reality of working-class neighborhoods, within the supposedly "legitimate" culture produced by contemporary art, soon appeared to him as a doorway to emancipation, one that could also prove dangerous, given the inevitability of compromising oneself. Set in worlds combining documentary, fantasy and futuristic fiction, his works tell of the lives, ambitions and trajectories of those around him, aiming to strike a balance between revealing too much and providing too little to those who observe from a distance.

Neïla Czermak Ichti, born 1996, lives and works between Marseille and Paris.

In her pictorial and graphic work, Neïla Czermak Ichti depicts her family and friends. She combines these intimate presences with aliens, vampires, sphinxes, and spirits drawn from ancestral beliefs and popular culture of horror and fantasy films. The result is a collection of monstrous yet friendly alter egos in a supernatural but peaceful universe, where these hybrid beings can reveal their true selves. Her works, ranging from intimate pen drawings to large-scale hanging cotton cloth canvases, as well as paintings on everyday objects, express both the supernatural power of the night and its inner fire through the electric contrast of dark surfaces enhanced by acidic colors. She, who enjoys reminding us that her name spelled backward means "alien", conveys her love for her family, both hereditary and chosen, populated by friends and fictional characters, who accompany her in her real and imagined lives.

Ndayé Kouagou, born 1992, lives and works in Neuilly-Plaisance, next to Paris.

Ndayé Kouagou is an artist and performer. His work revolves around texts that he authors, printed in large scales on walls, displayed on hanging or suspended supports, broadcasted in video format or performed live. With a musical composition or in the form of monologues, the artist multiplies the ways in which he addresses the public in his performances. Feigning naivety and confusion, he expresses his intimate reflections on subjects such as freedom, love, identity exploration and open-mindedness. Although the questions he raises in his work are of a personal nature, they easily resonate with the audience and acquire a universal character. 

Rayane Mcirdi, born 1993, lives and works in Asnières-sur-Seine and Pantin.

Anthropological, documentary and intimate, video artist Rayane Mcirdi’s work gives space to the sometimes unheard voices of people living in working-class neighborhoods, particularly in Asnières-sur-Seine, where he was born and raised. His approach involves compiling testimonies that remain unedited, uncut, and uncensored. The artist usually features his close friends and family members, revealing these narratives in their rawest form, no matter how trivial, day-to-day, humorous, awkward, politically sensitive, or beautiful they may be. From an insider’s perspective, the artist captures images of his cousin playing video games, of young people gathered around a hookah on a rooftop, or of his aunts chatting in a park, transforming them into works of art, public narratives and collective memories. In his videos, he assembles an archive of stories that are often forgotten, providing an alternate narrative of life in the Paris suburbs, based on intimate and subjective experience. 

Ibrahim Meïté Sikely, born 1996, lives and works between Champigny-sur-Marne, Paris and Marseille.

Ibrahim Meïté Sikely has built a powerful oeuvre that challenges conventions and expectations. It takes form as a revenge on existence, transforming himself and those close to him into modern heroes. In his works, he combines 19th-century symbolic motifs from romanticism and realism, drawing on the heritage of Géricault, Delacroix, Courbet and Goya, influences from African-American and Chinese-American painting, such as Henri Taylor and Martin Wong, and references from video games, the Bronze Age of Comic Books and mangas such as Akira, Gantz, Berserk and Dragon Ball. The formal vocabulary and themes he explores are also inspired by his own experiences, particularly his youth spent between Marseille, Pantin and Champigny-sur-Marne, which is illustrated by numerous paintings depicting him with his entourage. His pictorial work operates like allegories, juxtaposing narratives of resistance with scenes of quiet intimacy. 

Valentin Noujaïm, born 1991, lives and works between Frankfurt, Paris and Angers.

Valentin Noujaïm is a filmmaker of disappearance, stages political and fantastical tales. His research revolves around three main themes: improvised, compressed and vanished lives. His strange and marvelous universes are fueled by the experimental aspect of his film format, mixing archives, Digital Video, 8mm, digital and special effects. In his fantasized worlds, the heroes are often characters considered marginal in contemporary societies. They explore love and revolution, sometimes revolutionary love or love for revolution. Driven by social issues and the power dynamics operating in our society, the artist invites us to explore other paradigms and utopias through different time-spaces. 

Christelle Oyiri, born 1992, lives and works in Paris and Pantin.

Christelle Oyiri, also known as Crystallmess, is a DJ, composer, writer, performer and visual artist. Committed to shedding light on past and present subcultures, her work brings together personal and collective memories to counter the oblivion of knowledge, beliefs, practices and spiritualities, through artistic experimentation. Her research focuses on genealogy, archive-making and hauntology, as well as on forgotten, little-known or marginalized iconographies and mythologies, usually originating from the Internet or working-class neighborhoods. In the course of her projects, which involve investigations combining film, music and performance, she has also been led to explore the connections between music, spirituality and Afrofuturism, drawing inspiration from her Guadeloupean and Ivorian origins. 

Lassana Sarre, born 1994, lives and works in Paris and Vitry-sur-Seine. 

Lassana Sarre is a portrait painter whose work blends close friends, self-portraits and historical figures. In uncluttered spaces, he uses powerful images to reference his personal journey. In doing so, he questions the processes of social climbing and injustice that he has experienced, while suggesting a French recontextualization of black figures. His work also seeks to establish a different frame of reference, free from the dictates of the traditional European canon. His often large-scale canvases are governed by a principle of incompleteness, halfway between modesty and uncertainty. This principle allows symbols to infiltrate the canvas with subtlety, while reinforcing the frontal gaze of the figures to whom he pays tribute through pictorial contrast. 

Silina Syan, born 1996, lives and works in Pantin and Le Pré-Saint-Gervais.

Silina Syan’s work offers insights into the notion of cultural hybridity and intergenerational transmission, and explores the complex feeling of “in-betweenness”. Her practice is autobiographical, closely tied to her diverse origins - Bengali, Armenian and French - and childhood memories. It extends further by questioning her connection with the different communities she encounters, some of which are still rarely seen in contemporary art, and by documenting their experiences and concerns. Her transdisciplinary practice combines photographic portraiture, documentary, and video. Her artistic universe is populated with kitsch and popular elements, overloaded with objects and saturated with bright colors. Through her works, she constructs a fantasized narrative, a new mythology of migrations and cultural in-betweenness.

Seumboy Vrainom :€, born 1992, lives and works in Pantin. 

Seumboy Vrainom :€ is both an artist and an activist. His work takes on French colonial heritage which he addresses in educational videos on Histoires Crépues, a channel he created in 2020. In addition, he also creates artistic videos and delivers lecture-performances characterized by a DIY aesthetic drawing inspiration from the internet’s image stream, archives and video games. By turning the digital realm into his own creative universe, he defines himself as an off-ground activist and creates a powerful body of work highlighting the persistent dynamics of racist and colonial dominance in our contemporary world. 

Horya Makhlouf, born 1995, lives and works between Paris and Pantin. 

Horya Makhlouf is an art critic and co-founder of the collective and online platform Jeunes Critiques d’Art, established in 2016. Graduate of the École du Louvre, she believes in the emancipatory capacity of the arts within society. Her critics often incorporate various approaches borrowed from art history or social sciences. In recent years, she has focused on exploring concepts such as archiving and writing history, representation, and the role of institutions in promoting contemporary practices. Horya Makhlouf is a regular contributor to specialized magazines Zérodeux and Diptyk, to the visual arts section of Mediapart’s "L’esprit critique" podcast, and to PROJETS’ "Verni-es" podcast. She also co-founded the podcast "Le Croissant de feu" with artists Seumboy Vrainom :€ and Rayane Mcirdi.