Born in 1985, Marie Quéau is part of a generation of visual artists who use photography and video to fictionalize reality and reflect the disquiet of our times. Winner of the 5th edition of the LE BAL / ADAGP Prize for Young Creation, she explores the intentional confrontation of the body with extreme states. Positioned between anthropological documentary and speculative fiction, her recent work focuses on representing fragments of bodies subjected to trials or exposed to danger, captured in stark, high-contrast black and white.
In the exhibition on view at Le Bal until February 8 2026, she turns her attention to film stunt performers, freedivers, and enthusiasts of “rage rooms” — spaces where people pay to smash objects. Violence and destruction, noise and fury, are here channeled and held at a distance through artifice and theatricality, unexpectedly producing a form of meditative calm. Her connection to the noise and post-industrial electronic music scene—beyond any mere musical taste — also shapes her aesthetic. Together, we will explore this tension between image and sound, and these simulacra of violence, which stem from a postmodern reinterpretation of trance rituals and their iconographic presence throughout the history of civilization.
Her work has been shown in numerous institutions and festivals, including the Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France, the International Festival of Fashion and Photography in Hyères, the Cultural Center of Freiburg, La Filature in Mulhouse, and Galerie Madé in Paris.
Her projects have led to several publications: Handbook (September Books, 2018), a poetic mapping of sites dedicated to scientific research; Odds and Ends (Area Books, 2021), which explores endings as an active process in the world around us; and Le Royaume (Area Books, 2025), a portrait of an imaginary community.
Her works are included in various collections such as Frac Île-de-France, the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (Cnap), and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
