Arles once again becomes the center of the art and photography world this summer. As the city’s cultural season officially begins, exhibitions spill across museums, historic landmarks, private residences, and unexpected venues, anchored by Les Rencontres d’Arles and LUMA Arles. Alongside these major programs, a host of independent exhibitions and site-specific installations transform the city and its surrounding villages into an open-air gallery. The ninth edition of the Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents continues its mission of championing emerging artists, while nearby in Les Baux-de-Provence, Audrey Guimard reimagines the historic village through sculptural interventions carved from its native stone. Across the Rhône at Villa Benkemoun, artistic duo Gerard & Kelly transforms the iconic modernist residence into a living meditation on time, movement, and architecture.
Souleymane Bachir Diaw: “Sutura”
Les Rencontres d’Arles
Arles
Souleymane Bachir Diaw, “Worn White Grand-Bubu With Golden Embroidery and Green Headscarf, Grey Area,” 2021, series Sutura, 2021–ongoing Courtesy of the artist.
Souleymane Bachir Diaw, “Worn Striped Green Olive Jam-Puut and White Cotton Headpiece, Earth Tone,: 2022, series Sutura, 2021–ongoing Courtesy of the artist.
One of the standout exhibitions at Les Rencontres d’Arles, photographer Souleymane Bachir Diagne‘s “Sutura” draws from family photographs to explore how personal and domestic spaces shape identity, with a particular focus on the ways patriarchy can fracture intimacy. Rooted in historical and cultural memory, the series places the body at its center, using silence not as absence but as a deliberate act of withholding. The exhibition’s title embraces a dual meaning: in Wolof, sutura evokes modesty and discretion, while its Latin root refers to stitching or sewing. Together, these interpretations become a meditation on healing, protection, and revelation. Figures are often veiled or wrapped in fabric, suggesting that truth is never fully concealed nor entirely exposed. Instead, identity unfolds gradually, inviting viewers to consider what is revealed, what is hidden, and why. Through restrained compositions and quiet symbolism, the series transforms intimate family archives into a broader reflection on vulnerability and inherited memory.
What we love: The portraits possess a remarkable stillness that invites contemplation, allowing questions of identity, memory, and belonging to surface slowly rather than demanding immediate answers.
Souleymane Bachir Diaw at Les Rencontres d’Arles
July 6-October 4, 2026
Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents
LUMA Arles
Parc des Ateliers, Arles
Now in its ninth edition, the Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents, created by Parfums Christian Dior in 2018, continues to spotlight emerging voices from art and photography schools around the world. This year’s theme, “Face-to-Face,” brought together ten finalists whose projects explore identity, memory, and the act of looking. Mayed Almheiri presents a symbolic triptych in which the body becomes a site of tension between external appearance and inner self. Andréa Besset returns to her ancestral homeland of Armenia, weaving together family history with broader narratives of exile, resilience, and cultural memory. Yuan Chen explores stillness in an increasingly fast-moving world, inviting viewers to linger in moments of quiet observation. Meanwhile, Milena Schilling turns to water as a universal equalizer, photographing nude figures suspended in its depths where identity dissolves and shared humanity comes into focus.
What we love: The award offers an inspiring glimpse into the next generation of artists, championing bold new perspectives at the beginning of their creative journeys.
Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents at LUMA Arles
July 4–October 4, 2026
Clelia Montali, Sophie Dries, and Malù Dalla Piccola
Marie Laffont
4 Rue de Grille, Arles
Opened for a limited six-day run during Les Rencontres d’Arles, designer Marie Laffont collaborated with Martial Châteauvieux on an intimate exhibition inspired by Albert Einstein‘s quote: “Time and space are modes by which we think, not conditions in which we live.” Bringing together three contemporary artists, the presentation explores the invisible forces that shape our relationship to memory, materiality, and existence.
At its heart are Clelia Montali‘s photographs, which capture figures suspended between vulnerability and illusion. Through layered mixed-media interventions, translucent veils blur the line between subject and viewer, creating images that feel both ephemeral and psychologically charged. Sophie Dries turns her lens toward aging and liminality, exploring the spaces where identity begins to exceed the frame. Completing the dialogue, Malu Dalla Piccola presents sculptural works that navigate memory, inner landscapes, and the dissolution of material reality, inviting viewers to reflect on the shifting boundaries between body, time, and matter.
What we love: By placing contemporary artistic practices in conversation with Einstein’s philosophical reflections, the exhibition bridges art and science to create an experience that is as contemplative as it is visually compelling.
Clelia Montali, Sophie Dries, and Malù Dalla Piccola at Marie Laffont
July 6–July 13, 2026
Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith: “CORRESPONDENCES”
LUMA Arles
Parc des Ateliers, Arles
Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith, “The Melting,” 2026 (still). 2-Channel Video. Courtesy of Stephan Crasneanscki.
One of the standout exhibitions at LUMA Arles, “CORRESPONDENCES,” has been more than a decade in the making. Conceived by artist Stephan Crasneanscki, producer Simone Merli, and performer Patti Smith, the immersive installation brings together eight films, audiovisual works, newly commissioned artworks, sound compositions, archival materials, prints, and installations. At its core are the journeys of explorers, poets, scientists, and visionaries who ventured into uncharted mental and physical territories across time—from an Italian poet to a German climatologist. Sound serves as the exhibition’s emotional anchor, weaving together field recordings captured in some of the world’s most remote and fragile environments. Poetry and song animate these acoustic landscapes, while archival and newly created footage intertwine to explore both presence and absence, memory and disappearance.
What we love: By giving voice to endangered landscapes and disappearing ecosystems, the exhibition becomes a powerful meditation on what humanity is actively losing—and why it deserves to be remembered.
Soundwalk Collective & Patti Smith at LUMA Arles
July 4–November 8, 2026
Gérard & Kelly: “On Time”
La Villa Benkemoun
Arles
Courtesy of Villa Benkemoun. Photo by Alejandro Giraldo.
Gérard & Kelly Portrait. Courtesy of the subjects.
During Les Rencontres d’Arles 2026, the iconic La Villa Benkemoun comes alive through “On Time,” a site-specific performance by artistic duo Gerard & Kelly, as part of the villa’s artistic initiative curated by Raphaël Giannesini. Following acclaimed interventions at landmarks including Villa Savoye, E-1027, Farnsworth House, Glass House, and Schindler House, the duo transforms Émile Sala‘s modernist residence into a living clock. Once conceived as both a home and a space for artistic exchange, the villa becomes a stage where movement measures time. Through choreographed rituals and repeated gestures, the performers inhabit the architecture, activating its history while inviting visitors to experience time not as something to observe, but as something to live. The performance blurs the boundaries between domestic life, architecture, and memory, offering a contemporary interpretation of modernism’s enduring legacy.
What we love: By reactivating the villa through rhythm and movement, Gerard & Kelly reveal a new way of reading the house—one where architecture becomes both a timepiece and a living archive of its own history.
Gérard & Kelly at Villa Benkemoun
July 6–July 8, 2026
Audrey Guimard: “La Pierre en Résonance”
Amelie du Chalard Gallery
Les Baux-de-Provence
Audrey Guimard, Installation view of “La Pierre en Résonance,” 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Amelie du Chalard Gallery.
Audrey Guimard, Installation view of “La Pierre en Résonance,” 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Amelie du Chalard Gallery.
Just outside Arles in Les Baux-de-Provence, sculptor Audrey Guimard transforms the historic hilltop village with “La Pierre en Résonance,” an exhibition rooted in the very stone that has shaped its identity for centuries. Formed by water, wind, and light, the limestone of the Alpilles becomes the foundation for a series of sculptures, fountains, and totems crafted alongside blonde stone, brass, and glass. Stretching from the village entrance to the medieval castle, the sculptures gradually reveal themselves along the winding streets, encouraging visitors to experience the landscape at a slower pace. Raw, cracked surfaces sit beside polished, luminous forms, emphasizing the stone’s continual transformation across time. Created in collaboration with the Sarragan and Fontvieille quarries, the exhibition draws a dialogue between nature, Roman and medieval builders, and contemporary craftsmanship. Rather than imposing itself on the village, each work feels intrinsically tied to its surroundings, allowing the architecture and landscape to become part of the artistic experience.
What we love: By pairing centuries-old stoneworking traditions with contemporary sculpture, Guimard breathes new creative energy into one of Provence’s most timeless landscapes.
Audrey Guimard at Amelie du Chalard Gallery
June 4–October 31, 2026
Charlotte Gainsbourg: “5bis”
La Galerie du Cloître
4 Rue de Grille, Arles
Charlotte Gainsbourg, “Title Unknown,” from the 5bis series, date unknown. Courtesy of the artist and Saint Laurent.
Charlotte Gainsbourg turns the lens toward one of France’s most storied addresses in her first-ever photography exhibition, “5bis.” The exhibition features previously unseen photographs of her father Serge Gainsbourg‘s longtime home at Maison Gainsbourg, offering an intimate portrait of the residence before it became a museum dedicated to his life and legacy. Following its presentation in Arles, the exhibition will travel to Paris, where it will open at Saint Laurent Rive Droite in late September.
The twenty images transform the house into more than a cultural landmark—they reveal it as a lived-in family home filled with warmth, memory, and quiet intimacy. Rather than documenting an icon, the photographs preserve fleeting moments of everyday life, allowing nostalgia to become something deeply personal.
What we love: Accompanying the exhibition is 5bis, published by Saint Laurent Editions in standard, limited, and artist’s editions. More than a catalog, it extends Charlotte Gainsbourg’s meditation on memory, proving that creative legacies are not preserved through monuments alone, but through the intimate act of seeing—and sharing—them anew.
Charlotte Gainsbourg at La Galerie du Cloître
July 6–September 6, 2026
