NICE.- The Villa Arson art center dedicates its spring 2026 exhibition season to video artist and media theorist Nathalie Magnan (1956–2016), inaugurating a two-part program devoted to contemporary French figures in art and thought whose work has remained marginal to dominant art-historical narratives. The program, which will continue in autumn 2026 with a second season dedicated to French Caribbean artist Serge Hélénon, aims to reassess singular artistic and intellectual trajectories, highlight their contemporary relevance and influence across generations, and foster the circulation of their ideas within current debates.
Magnanrama: Portraits, Networks, and Contemporary Resonances of Nathalie Magnan
A media theorist, filmmaker, cyberfeminist, and navigator of both digital and maritime spaces, Nathalie Magnan made a vital interdisciplinary contribution to the histories of technology, feminism, and LGBTQI+ struggles. An educator, webmistress, hacktivist, and mediator between artistic, political, and technological fields, she developed collective and rhizomatic practices grounded in feminist “do-it-yourself” methodologies. Throughout her life, she fostered encounters between images, texts, people, machines, and social movements, encouraging forms of knowledge based on exchange and solidarity.
The exhibition brings together archival documents, films, and artworks that retrace her trajectory. Rather than functioning solely as a portrait or a tribute, Magnanrama has been devised as a collective biography that opens onto the present. It reveals how Magnan’s ideas, struggles, and networks continue to resonate in the work of multiple generations of artists and thinkers. It showcases her predecessors (Barbara Hammer); figures and groups she collaborated with (Shu Lea Cheang, Old Boys Network, VNS Matrix, The Yes Men); and her contemporaries (Guerrilla Girls, Julia Scher), as well as those who have followed in her footsteps (Chloé Desmoineaux, Bobby Brim, Ada LaNerd, Cindy Coutant).
Curated by Mathilde Belouali, with exhibition design by Cécile Bouffard and graphic design by Clara Pasteau, the exhibition will unfold in three chapters: at Villa Arson, Nice (February 20–May 31, 2026); Les Capucins, Embrun (June 26–August 23, 2026); and Bétonsalon, Paris (September 25–December 12, 2026). The project has been developed in collaboration with Reine Prat and in partnership with Archives de la critique d’art / Université Rennes 2.
A publication dedicated to Nathalie Magnan, directed by Alice Dusapin (head of Villa Arson’s publishing department) and Mathilde Belouali, and designed by Léna Araguas and Alaric Garnier, will be published by Villa Arson in fall 2026.
Mechanical Kurds by Hito Steyerl
In resonance with Magnanrama, the Villa Arson art center presents Mechanical Kurds, a solo exhibition by Hito Steyerl. A filmmaker, a theorist, and a leading figure in contemporary art, Steyerl has long examined the political, economic, and technological conditions shaping image production and circulation in the age of digital capitalism.
With Mechanical Kurds (2025), she presents an immersive video installation combining documentary inquiry, fiction, and critical speculation. The work explores contemporary forms of micro-labour, the geopolitics of images, and the hidden infrastructures underlying so-called “autonomous” technologies. Drawing on the historical figure of the eighteenth-century “Mechanical Turk” and transposing it to the era of digital platforms, the installation exposes the bodies, territories, and conflicts concealed by artificial intelligence.
Developed through encounters with click-workers in refugee camps in Iraqi Kurdistan, the film brings together testimonies, computer-generated imagery, synthetic voices, data flows, and original music. These layered elements reveal the gap between technological promises and lived realities marked by precarity, surveillance, and dispossession. By confronting viewers with an organized opacity, Mechanical Kurds unfolds a sharp and timely geopolitical critique of the digital economy and automated warfare.
The exhibition is curated by Marie-Ann Yemsi, Director of the Villa Arson art center.
