Corps et âmes at the Bourse de Commerce
Time collapses at the Bourse de Commerce where Rodin meets Dumas in Emma Lavigne’s “Corps et âmes.” This bold exhibition shatters art historical categories, placing 100 works in direct confrontation across eras. Arthur Jafa’s rapid-fire images of Black cultural figures pulse through the glass-domed rotunda, creating a space where bodies from different times speak the same political language.
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This curatorial approach pairs canonical figures like Auguste Rodin with contemporary artists such as Marlene Dumas and Zanele Muholi. These juxtapositions reveal surprising connections across generations while highlighting how representations of the body have consistently served as vehicles for political and personal expression throughout art history.
The exhibition makes strategic use of the Bourse’s distinctive architecture. The central rotunda, crowned by its glass dome, houses Arthur Jafa’s video installation. This work assembles rapid-fire sequences of Black cultural figures and historical imagery, creating a rhythmic visual experience that reverberates through the circular space. The dome’s reflective properties amplify the installation, multiplying the moving images across the architecture to create an immersive environment where bodies past and present seem to converge.
Duane Hanson’s “Seated Artist” demonstrates another approach to corporeality. This hyperrealist sculpture achieves such technical precision that viewers frequently mistake it for an actual person. This confusion—the momentary inability to distinguish between art and life—speaks directly to the exhibition’s exploration of boundaries between representation and reality.
Lavigne’s curatorial vision extends beyond static visual art. The exhibition incorporates a program of performance and music events that activate the space in different ways throughout its run. This multidisciplinary approach emphasizes the exhibition’s interest in the living, moving body rather than just its representation. The decision to create an official exhibition playlist available for download allows visitors to extend this sensory experience beyond the museum walls.
“Corps et âmes” operates on multiple conceptual levels simultaneously. It examines how artists have depicted human bodies as sites of political resistance, personal identity, and cultural memory. By placing works from different eras in direct dialogue, the exhibition suggests that these concerns transcend specific historical moments.
For visitors, the experience offers both intellectual engagement and visceral impact. The combination of monumental video work, hyperrealist sculpture, and traditional media creates a multisensory environment that addresses both mind and body—appropriately reflecting the exhibition’s title.
What distinguishes this exhibition from similar survey shows is its deliberate disruption of chronology and categorization. Rather than presenting a linear history of the body in art, “Corps et âmes” creates a network of connections that encourages visitors to discover their own pathways through this rich material. This approach reflects contemporary thinking about history itself as nonlinear and continually subject to reinterpretation.
The Bourse de Commerce, with its transformation by architect Tadao Ando from historical commodity exchange to contemporary art space, provides a particularly resonant setting for an exhibition concerned with transformation and the interplay between past and present. The building’s own history of housing commercial transactions involving colonial goods adds additional layers of meaning to works that address commodification of bodies and colonial legacies.
As major institutions increasingly reexamine their collections and exhibition practices, “Corps et âmes” offers one model for how museums might create more dynamic conversations across their holdings. By prioritizing thematic connections over traditional periodization, Lavigne demonstrates how art historical narratives can be productively disrupted without sacrificing intellectual rigor.
