To mark its reopening, the Château d'Eau invited French photographer Sophie Zénon to take over its new spaces.
Exhibition extended until March 22, 2026!
From the intimate to the grand narrative, THE HUMUS OF THE WORLD paints a subtle portrait of this artist fascinated by beauty and terror, haunted by questions of memory and the passage of time. The place of memory, our relationship to forgetting, loss, absence, death, but also exile and migration are central concepts in her universe. These are universal subjects that Sophie Zénon returns to each time with a new approach, both thematic and formal. Over the years, the artist's work has unfolded into a multifaceted narrative revealing the important place she gives to materiality, favoring the hybridization of media: photographic prints, reactivated archives, artist's books, videos, installations, but also glass engravings, monotypes, woven and modeled prints... These experimental practices have given rise to organic, vibrant, and poetic works guided by notions of fragility, impermanence, and the breath of life.
The unique appearance of the venue inspired the artist to create a scenography based on the metaphor of the circle, which for her evokes the cycle of life and death. The exhibition is divided into three chapters, presenting Sophie's successive cycles of work throughout the spaces of the Château d'Eau : In the Tower, on the ground floor: REMANENCES (since 2013) on the memory of war landscapes; in the basement: IN CASE WE DIE (2008-2011), a cycle on death in the tradition of 19th-century post-mortem photography, to which the artist has added new, previously unseen works for this exhibition; and finally, in Gallery 2: ARBORESCENCES (2010-2017), dedicated to her own family history.
In the two spaces of the Tower, Sophie Zénon creates a dialogue between her work and seventeen paintings, sculptures, objects, and videos from different periods and continents, on loan from institutions in Toulouse (Musée des Augustins, Musée des Arts Précieux Paul-Dupuy, Musée Saint-Raymond – archaeology museum, and Les Abattoirs, Musée-Frac Occitanie Toulouse).
"The title I gave to my exhibition at the Château d'Eau, L’humus du monde (The Humus of the World) is an organic title that can be read as well as breathed in, successfully evoking in just a few words both the passage of time and the stratifications of history. It evokes the smell of undergrowth, of decomposition, but also of nourishing fermentation, [...]. An eternal renewal."
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Text of Damarice Amao, Photography Historian, Curator at the Photography Department, Centre Pompidou, Paris
A trained anthropologist, Sophie Zénon has for the past three decades been creating a hybrid body of artwork that explores the workings of memory, the fragility of human and non-human life.
Seeking to express what cannot be said, everything that eludes perception and immediate understanding, Zénon conducts patient investigations into our relationship with nature, death and the sacred (Les Momies de Palerme).
In another cycle, Zénon delves into her personal and family background (L’Homme Paysage / Alexandre, Dans le miroir des rizières / Maria), returning to the narrative of historical events by carving out new, poetically imaginative spaces of sensory perception (L’Herbe aux yeux bleus). In all her works, the idea is to draw out the ghosts that haunt our landscapes and lives and coax them into the present, to explore the way we are shaped by the past, giving form and body to our history in the process.
In that respect, Zénon as an artist does not simply draw on her cherished experiences of shamanism. She is also a photographer-alchemist who experiments, fits the pieces together and plays around with photography in her quest to enhance its power to expose. Photograms, collage, stamping, modelling, graphite, wood, pigments, wax and even gold – all part of the non-exhaustive list of techniques and materials explored by the artist over the past few years.
She shares her love of materials and experiments with researchers, poets, authors, printers, engravers and craftspeople, all of whom have lent her a hand for different projects. Those artistic partnerships have led to unique creations – precious objects and sculptures – which subtly draw out the poetic universe of her photographic images (Air, Eau, Terre et Feu).
That spirit of dialogue runs through the collection currently on display at the Château d’Eau. L’humus du monde offers us an organic immersion in the diverse ramifications of the artist’s protean body of work. Chronological accuracy is not the focus here. The formal, conceptual echoes that weave in and out of her videos, installations, photographs and artist’s books give meaning to this meander through the unique architecture of the Château d’Eau.
The artist welcomes us into her artistic universe and her imaginary museum in equal measure. The collection assembled here is an unprecedented mix of original artworks from her personal collection and four public institutions run by Toulouse City Council - Les Abattoirs / Frac Occitanie and pieces from Centre Pompidou (the French Museum of Modern Art), and three museums: Musée des Augustins, Musée des Arts Précieux Paul-Dupuy and Musée Saint-Raymond. This intimate exploration of Sophie Zénon’s outstanding artistic matrix unfolds alongside works by some of her acclaimed fellow artists including Dado, Dieter Appelt, Zoran Mušič, Glenda León and Henri Michaux. A selection of 17th and 18th century vanitas artwork from Holland and Italy embellish the experience, along with various vernacular or anonymous objects.
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Book “L’Herbe aux yeux bleus” (Blue-Eyed Grass)
Retail price: €25 – On sale at Le Château d’Eau
Published on the occasion of Sophie Zénon's exhibition L’humus du monde (The Humus of the World), presented at the Château d’Eau from November 22, 2025, to March 8, 2026.
The artist's book “L'Herbe aux yeux bleus” is designed as a herbarium that explores the link between landscape and history through the figure of so-called “obsidional” plants, introduced to Lorraine during the wars. The first volume, visual in nature, brings together the works of Sophie Zénon (photograms, prints, sculptures, archives, etc.); the second, textual in nature, brings together interviews, indexes, notes, and a preface by Damarice Amao.
Images: Sophie Zénon
Preface: Damarice Amao (photography historian, Centre Pompidou)
Publisher: Editions Païen / Graphic design: Lia Pradal
Pagination: 64 pages (vol. 1) + 16 pages (vol. 2)
Printing: Escourbiac
Production: Le Château d’Eau
