ORIANE THOMASSON
Paradis was built as a collection, on the model of cabinets of curiosities. This photographic project consists of personal photographs, archives, as well as botanical and mineralogical illustrations. Oriane Thomasson’s photographic approach questions the different statuses of the image, and the way in which they influence our imagination, as well as our exotic fantasies.
Art and science, natural and artificial come together to build a science fiction fueled by different photographic terrains such as natural history museums and zoos, but also other distant “exotic” territories, such as Laos, China and the Vietnam, where Oriane Thomasson traveled for this series. She brought back photographs in the manner of explorers who, in the early days of photography, brought back like trophies, images from distant colonized countries to then assemble them into collections. Paradis questions the invention of the concept of nature through its representations, and the myths operating underground in our Western societies that result from it.
Added to this is a fictional short story in which Oriane Thomasson takes the reader to an unknown land, putting him in the place of an explorer discovering a mysterious territory for the very first time. Paradis is an invitation for the reader to rediscover nature’s ability to make us imagine, dream and build new stories.
Oriane Thomasson is a French artist based in Brussels. Her first photobook, Paradis, was published by The Eriskay Connection in August 2022. Paradis was showcased at international fairs such as Unseen Amsterdam, the New York Art Book Fair, the Tokyo Art Book Fair, and Polycopies. The book was awarded as one of the Best Dutch Book Designs 2022 and was shortlisted for the Author’s Book Award at the Rencontres d’Arles, where it was also exhibited in 2022. Paradis is now sold out.
Through her photographic work, both analog and digital, Oriane Thomasson explores the themes of paradise and nature, integrating archives and drawings into her practice. The materiality of images and their circulation allow her to reflect on our visual imagination and the way it is constructed.
The Paradis series was exhibited at Chez Olivia gallery as part of the Photo Brussels Festival in 2024. Her work has also been shown at Contretype in 2019 during Propositions d’artistes, and again in 2024 for the Pop Up Flash Sales. In 2021, she participated in the Image Satellite Festival, organized by Sept Off in Nice, where she was nominated for the Caisse d’Épargne Prize and where a first installation of Atlantis was presented.
Atlantis was developed during a research residency at ISELP in Brussels. Part of the series will also be presented as an installation at ISELP for the group exhibition Réminiscences from April to June 2025.
Oriane Thomasson studied at ERG, and in 2019 she was awarded the Roger de Conynck Prize, which recognizes “a talented young photographer.”
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