ROOTS HOLD WHAT HISTORY LEFT BEHIND
ROOTS HOLD WHAT HISTORY LEFT BEHIND. It has always been a charged word. In the 1970s, it echoed in resistance chants and reclaimed identities. Today, in Arles, it returns with new force. Presented by Cultish Studio during Les Rencontres de la Photographie, ROOTS is more than an exhibition. It’s a lyrical response to fractured lineages and silent inheritances. Curated by Julien Frydman and Christine Milan, and housed in the hauntingly beautiful Collatéraux, a 200m² former stable reimagined as a gallery, this third offering from Cultish Studio invites us to dig. Not into the past for nostalgia, but for truth.
Myth and diaspora ripple through Mackenzy Bergile’s lens. A moment suspended between motion and ancestry & Nicolás Lamas reframes antiquity through machine. A clash of ruins and reproduction. Courtesy Cultish Studio.
What lies beneath: matter and memory
ROOTS explores creation as an act of cultural excavation. It asks: what do we carry, even when we forget? Moreover, it highlights the power of materials to preserve what words can’t always express. Featuring Carolle Benitah, Mackenzy Bergile, Sarah Braeck, Nicolás Lamas, Brett Lloyd, Diana Scherer, and with a powerful appearance by Zineb Sedira, the show spans photography, textiles, video, and installation. Each artist roots their work in the tactile. For instance, whether it’s fabric, earth, family photos, or floral DNA, materials are memory. Benitah embroiders over old photos like stitching back her own origin story. Bergile paints the Haitian diaspora in mythic hues. Similarly, Scherer turns nature into code, planting patterns inside the soil itself. Sedira, as always, disrupts space and time. Consequently, her presence reframes the show, linking personal identity with geopolitical displacement.
ROOTS: Soil, silence, survival
ROOTS speaks softly but insists on being heard. The exhibition leans into the unsaid. The Collatéraux aren’t neutral. Their stone walls, their past as aristocratic stables, their rebirth into an art space, all of it matters. Instead of masking the site’s colonial ghost, ROOTS lets the architecture witness. It creates tension, and then uses that tension as narrative. The show never screams. Instead, it lingers. Visitors leave slower than they entered. That’s its genius.
Carolle Benitah weaves memory, loss and longing through the act of looking. ROOTS stages rituals of identity where every shadow speaks.
In a moment when digital culture untethers us daily, this show plants us firmly back in the real. In fiber, pigment, dirt, and grief. Origin stories told through thread, shadow, and soil. It reminds us: to imagine a future, we must first speak with our ghosts.
Did you enjoy ROOTS HOLD WHAT HISTORY LEFT BEHIND? As part of our ongoing exploration of legacy, discover our article Nicole Lala: Dual Voices, a photographic duet between mother and daughter.
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Marie Loire Moulin approaches fashion as an immersive language—one that expresses identity, character, and cultural influence. Echoing Jean Cocteau’s observation that “Fashion is what goes out of fashion,” Moulin embraces the paradox at the heart of her craft. For her, fashion is a living, breathing art form—constantly deconstructed, reimagined, and reshaped in response to the world around it.
What fuels Marie Loire’s creativity is the ability to blend worlds—to explore the intersections of fashion, technology, history, and art. She is inspired by how these disciplines collide to generate experiences that are not only visually compelling, but also deeply purposeful.
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Whether on set or in virtual space, Marie Loire seeks originality and depth. Her work is marked by richly layered references, a reverence for detail, and a belief that fashion—at its best—can speak not just to the eye, but to the mind.
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