Art Paris

REPARATION

by Alexia Fabre

Rparation

Alexia Fabre sets out to explore contemporary art through the perspective of reparation, taking as her starting point twenty international artists selected from the participating galleries. Reparation is a broad term: its meaning shifts across artists, cultures and temporalities. By making connections between the past, present and future, reparation evokes notions such as care, kindness and time spent preserving objects, ideas, people and stories. It seeks to put together fragments, to mend wounds – both physical and symbolic. It hints at injuries, wars, absences, suffering and oblivion, gesturing towards historical silences and injustices, as well as the hope of projecting a new and “entirely” reconstructed element into the future.

Indeed, reparation conveys the idea of restoring the self, a story, or a reality that once was. It may be visible - marking its existence by a scar, or elusive, fading into invisibility. At times, reparation conceals the very traces it seeks to mend. It permeates both the intimate and the collective, connecting personal narratives with the state of the world itself, sometimes forging ties between the two. While it can imply notions of debt or compensation, here it speaks above all of resistance, resilience and reinvention. Reparation is about engaging in a sustained relationship – one that prioritizes doing rather than doing again, the desire to make things last, and the need for dialogue and mutual understanding with what has been repaired ; sometimes, it even becomes a conversation with oneself.

A catalogue presenting the work of each selected artist will be produced to accompany this themed visit and a panel discussion during Art Paris 2026 will provide further insight into these issues.

Selected Artists:

Nú Barreto (born in 1966, Guinea-Bissau) – Galerie Nathalie Obadia
Oliver Beer (born in 1985, United Kingdom) – Galerie Almine Rech
Anaïs Boudot (born in 1984, France) – Binome
Javier Carro Temboury (born in 1997, Spain) – SAILLY
Teresa Gancedo (born in 1937, Spain) – Galeria RocioSantaCruz
Shilpa Gupta (born in 1976, India) – Galleria Continua
Aung Ko (born in 1980, Burma) – A2Z Art Gallery
Mehdi-Georges Lahlou (born in 1983, France) – Galerie Papillon
Nge Lay (born in 1979, Burma) – A2Z Art Gallery
Duy Mạnh Nguyễn (born in 1984, Vietnam) – Galerie BAO
Juanita Mclauchlan (born in 1975, Australia) – Cassandra Bird Gallery
Roméo Mivekannin (born in 1986, Benin) – Galerie Eric Dupont
Otobong Nkanga (born in 1974, Nigeria) – In Situ - Fabienne Leclerc & Lumen Travo
Estefanía Peñafiel Loaiza (born in 1978, Ecuador) – Galerie Alain Gutharc
Enrique Ramírez (born in 1979, Chile) – Galerie Michel Rein
Ruddy Roye (born in 1969, Jamaica) – Galerie Polaris
Alison Saar (born in 1956, United States of America) – Galerie Lelong
Mary Sibande (born in 1982, South Africa) – Everard Read Gallery
Arthur Simms (born in 1961, Jamaica) – Galerie RX&SLAG
Sandra Vásquez de la Horra (born in 1967, Chile) – Galerie Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain

Ruddy Roye
A humanist’s Eye , 2025
Galerie Polaris

^{Alexia Fabre is executive director of the Centre Pompidou Francilien in Massy. As a heritage curator she was previously in charge of running the project for the creation of the MAC VAL contemporary art museum.
Amongst other activities, Alexia Fabre was artistic director of the Nuit Blanche Paris in 2009 and 2011 (together with Frank Lamy) and of the Biennale l’Art de la Joie in Quebec in 2017. She co-curated La Lune-du voyage réel aux voyages imaginaires at the RMN Grand Palais in 2019 alongside Philippe Malgouyres and was the president of Videomuseum, the professional network of public collections of modern and contemporary art, from 2018 to 2022. She has taught at the École du Louvre and been a member of the Musée National d’Art Moderne acquisitions committee, associate curator at Grand Paris Express, president of the Prix Dauphine pour l’Art Contemporain and a member of the Prix Emerige. From 2022 to March 2025, she directed the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris, where she defended the values of diversity and inclusivity, the recognition of artists and their implication in society and present-day issues. In 2024 - 2025, she curated the 17^th Biennale de Lyon - Les voix des fleuves / Crossing the water.}

^{Alexia Fabre}