Les Ombres

For the fourth creation in the collection of contemporary performances by the Musée du Louvre and the Festival d’Automne, Nacera Belaza presents Les Ombres. She will be taking over the Galerie des Cinq Continents on the occasion of its reopening, in a redesigned presentation of the collections, in dialogue with works from the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac.

In her Processions – alongside her stage productions – Nacera Belaza has developed an off-stage practice involving the audience. Inspired by this research, spectators at the Louvre will wander through the new Galerie des Cinq Continents, hosting non-Western works from the former Pavillon des Sessions, now presented in dialogue with works from the museum’s other departments, weaving a sensitive, off-centre horizontality between continents and cultures. Surrounded by an extended group of performers and young amateurs, Nacera Belaza is part of the political and aesthetic process of transforming the museum, offering a sensitive re-reading of movement and memory. This silent dialogue between the moving bodies of the dancers and the materiality of the works captures the energy and aura of the objects, feeding into a performance imbued with dreamlike intimacy, in which dance, and the oscillation between light and shadow that it engages, illuminates the collections in a singular light.