Jérémie Danon

Film

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Souvenirs: these strange objects are quintessential symbols of places known to all and visited by millions of people every year. Despite their representational value, these shoddy goodies are not manufactured in the countries where they are sold, and their trade is often conducted by foreign communities, who are also strangers to bits of history they are marketing. 

Is a souvenir the quintessence of an experience and an emotion? Has the meaning of a souvenir changed over time? Who is a souvenir really meant for? Does it encapsulate the complexity of the travel experience through the most extreme formal trivialisation? Does the form of the souvenir object have to be emblematic, does it have to embody the essential, to give free rein to the imagination and to reminiscence? Does it still make sense to identify a place with architectural and artistic symbols? What does it mean today to take(away) a souvenir of a trip? How does cultural specificity circulate through the large-scale global production of consumer goods? 

Whereas in other cultures it is inappropriate to remember an intense experience, is not a souvenir as we understand it here a form of shared memory? Are not these objects that are supposed to come from all over the world, and which impose themselves on our minds as emblems of culture and history, ultimately a manifestation of Western cultural hegemony?

Jérémie Danon

The individual, his identity and the place given to him by society are at the heart of Jérémie Danon’s work. Using photography, video and painting, the artist records time spent and moments shared with singular individuals. Together they ask the question of how to tell their story to the world.

At the crossroads of reality and fiction, Danon’s approach to auteur documentary is a grounded yet highly artistic form of video. By amassing his observations and questions, his projects enable him to present very directly the words and stories he mediates. The resulting forms are not simply documentation, but the transposition, even the sublimation, of a shared experience.

Jérémie Danon studied at the École des beaux-arts in Paris and at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains, Tourcoing. His work has been shown at the FRAC Île-de-France (Romainville), the Centre culturel Jean Cocteau (Les Lilas), the Fondation Ricard (Paris), Centquatre – Paris and the BBB Centre d’art (Toulouse). His work can be found in the collections of the musée d’art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Fondazione In Between Art Film (Italy), as well as in various personal collections, including that of agnès b.

His projects have been supported by a number of prestigious institutions and awards. For L’Utopie topique in 2024, he received support for innovation in creative documentaries from the CNC, the Fonds Régional pour les Talents Émergents (FoRTE) and a grant from the Fondation des artistes in 2022. In 2023, he won the agnès b Prize, and more recently he received support for a short film in Seine-Saint-Denis from Cinéma 93 for Ride. He has also won awards at film festivals, including the Grand Prix du jury at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival for the best French short film in 2021.

This year, he is presenting his film Ride, co-directed with Kiddy Smile, at the Lyon Biennale. He works closely with the Galerie Éric Mouchet, with whom he has just presented his film Naomi at Loop Art Fair Barcelona, and is preparing his next solo exhibition with them.

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