The renowned red-brick Château d'Eau photography center in Toulouse, France, will reopen its doors on November 22 following an extensive renovation. The historic building, which remained active during construction with programming housed in the former MATOU (Museum of Posters of Toulouse), has undergone a comprehensive transformation that includes improved accessibility and circulation for all visitors.
The architectural facelift of the photography center, founded by Jean Dieuzaide in 1974 as France's first dedicated photography venue, features a redefined visitor pathway and enhanced garden-side beautification. The renovated facility will inaugurate its reopening with Sophie Zénon's major exhibition "L'humus du monde" (The Humus of the World), which occupies all three available spaces throughout the center.
The unique circular configuration of the venue inspired Zénon to create a scenography that exploits this distinctive form as a metaphor for the cycle of life and death, providing an ideal setting for her preferred themes of memory, history, and the passage of time. In an exclusive interview, Zénon explained her approach to curator Jean-Jacques Ader, describing the exhibition as "an unprecedented conversation" rather than a traditional retrospective.
"I prefer to define this exhibition as a journey through nearly thirty years of creations from 1996 to 2025, intimately linked to a life journey," Zénon stated. The exhibition presents a selection of just over one hundred works, with the artist emphasizing how she incorporated the site's circular physiognomy into her concept. "I worked on the idea of the circle as metaphors for the cycle of life and death, transformation and rebirth. The Château d'Eau is a formidable showcase for my work, which is entirely devoted to these notions, influenced by my university studies on shamanism in northern Asia and our relationship with the dead and death."
This marks Zénon's first exhibition at the legendary venue, and she expressed her honor at inaugurating the reopening of this mythical and historic location. "You don't invest in it like any other place. I worked on this exhibition for many, many months – the stakes are important and stimulating, it required a strong project worthy of this challenge," she explained. The comprehensive show spans the Tower with its basement and ground floor, as well as Gallery 2.
Zénon's multifaceted presentation includes not only photographs but also artist books, videos, three-dimensional objects, and paper sculptures. Her protean work encompasses different plastic writings while always leaving an important place for gesture and craftsmanship. "The studio is not just a place of execution for me; it is above all the place of thought. I like to create universes, make works dialogue with each other, always taking into account the architecture of the place," she noted.
For this Toulouse exhibition, Zénon conceived a special creation: four hard porcelain skulls embroidered by needle by her friend, textile artist Aurélie Lanoiselée, around the theme of the four elements – water, air, earth, and fire. The skulls' unique feature is that they were made in Limoges from an MRI scan of Zénon's own skull, which was modeled in volume in resin to create a mold and then cast in porcelain.
In a distinctive curatorial approach, Zénon reversed the typical museum collaboration model. Instead of having her works dialogue with museum pieces, she requested permission from four Toulouse city museums – the Augustins Museum, the Paul Dupuy Museum of Precious Arts, Saint-Raymond Museum, and Les Abattoirs – to extract objects, paintings, sculptures, and videos from their collections. "These works punctuate mine. They are never illustrations, but works by artists who count in my journey, my 'elective affinities.' These works will, in a way, draw a hollow portrait of what I am and what drives me," she explained.
The directors and curators of all four establishments enthusiastically supported the project, seeing it as an opportunity to bring their museum works into dialogue with contemporary art. This proposal aligned with both the city's dynamics and the Château d'Eau team's desire to increasingly expand such initiatives.
Accompanying the exhibition is a special publication created in collaboration with Lia Pradal, founder of Païen Editions located in Ariège. Rather than a traditional exhibition catalog, they produced an artist book focusing on "L'herbe aux yeux bleus" (The Blue-Eyed Grass), Zénon's most recent work on obsidional plants featured on the ground floor of the Château d'Eau Tower.
Regarding her exhibition title choice, Zénon offered a poetic explanation: "It's a title that can be read as much as it can be breathed. It summarizes my work by itself. Imagine walking in a forest on a summer day after a big storm – the earth is still warm and smells of leaves, earth, and mushrooms rise to the surface, smells of decomposition but also of nourishing ferment. This title manages to reconcile the idea of stratification of history, the passage of time, and renewed vitality. An evocation of the perpetual cycle of death and life."
"L'humus du monde" will run at the Château d'Eau gallery in Toulouse from November 22, 2025, to March 8, 2026. The accompanying publication "L'herbe aux yeux bleus" is available through Païen Editions, with additional information accessible at the venue's official website.
