Nanténé Traoré (born 1993 in Paris) is an artist and writer who lives and works between Brussels and Paris. He is represented by Galerie Sultana in Paris, and his work has been published by Éditions Points, Hachette, and Gorge Bleue.

His photographic work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Louis Roederer Foundation as part of the Arles Photography Festival (2024), at the Amanda Wilkinson Gallery in London, at Air de Paris in Romainville (2024), at Le Lieu Unique with the FRAC Pays de Loire in Nantes (2024), at the Galerie Marcelle Alix in Paris (2023), and at the Magasins Généraux in Pantin (2022).
Nanténé Traoré’s work has been recognized with several awards, including the Prix Découverte at the Rencontres d’Arles, the Prix Utopie, the Prix Mentor, the Vonovia Prize in Germany, and the Wort im Bild Prize in Austria. His works are part of the CNAP’s collections.

Working exclusively with analog photography, Nanténé Traoré is deeply interested in the materiality of the image, favoring the use of expired film, manually altered negatives, and unconventional printing surfaces such as velvet and Plexiglas. After documenting marginalized communities, particularly transgender communities, through photography and writing, his practice gradually shifted toward a more abstract body of work at the intersection of photography and painting. In his recent work, the artist explores our relationship to chimeras, ghosts, and the human and non-human traces that inhabit the world, while also examining his own relationship to death, mental health, and altered states of consciousness. Together, these lines of inquiry give rise to images that are often restless, at times unsettling, where the boundary between reality and fiction becomes increasingly blurred.