The first exhibition to feature Australia since the creation of the Rencontres d’Arles, “On Country” brings together the works of 17 Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and collectives in Sainte-Anne Church, the festival’s epicenter, located on Place de la République. Among the exhibition’s key pieces is Warakurna’s superhero, this year’s headliner.
Signed by Tony Albert, David Charles Colins, and Kieran Lawson, it depicts a young Aboriginal man posing on a rusty car wreck, looking swaggering in his gleaming Captain America costume, the cult character from the Marvel universe. In the background, the desert and red rock mountains of his homeland create a made-in-Australia western landscape. An approach aimed at celebrating indigenous people and their lands.
“Superheroes might fly or become invisible, but in our own communities, what about helping our elders, or retaining culture?” asks Tony Albert. “That can be a superpower in its own right. Superheroes also have a powerful connection to Aboriginal culture and our stories of creation.” A nice snub to Trump’s imperialist America and its anti-diversity and anti-inclusion agendas.
In the series entitled “Majority Rule,” Michael Cook imagines an Australia where Aboriginal people are the majority, despite only representing 4% of the current population. “Touching on the discriminatory nature of society, Cook uses the same Indigenous man multiplied over and over in each image to communicate his message, and paint a picture of a societal structure reversed.”
This spotlight on invisible communities echoes other “counter-voices,” this time Brazilian ones. They resonate in the exhibition “Ancestral Future” which presents, at the Trinitaires church, the work of contemporary artists challenging official history and humorously denouncing “the construction of stereotypes, the silencing of minorities and the violence against Afro-Brazilian, immigrant, indigenous and LGBTQIA+ peoples.”
Like artist Mayara Ferrão, who uses AI to create lifelike photos of wedding ceremonies featuring indigenous women kissing. We’ll also discover the interest of a new generation of artists in performance. “A pioneer to this generation, Paulo Nazareth’s updates the postcard tradition with his performatic self-portraits that expose American society’s prejudice and racism.”
The exhibition also features photographer Rafael Bqueer’s superb work on Themônias, a committed artistic collective that supports drag culture and the aesthetic of cross-dressing. It’s burlesque and joyfully punk. Alongside him, Castiel Vitorino Brazileiro and Melissa Oliveira “use straight photography and video to show how our bodies are also archival territories where ancestral and spiritual traditions are presented, disputed and revived.”
A way of approaching the question of gender and race, a theme dear to the researcher and “kwir” activist Brandon Gercara. As part of the exhibition “Magma in the Ocean” presented at the Maison des Peintres, the artist invests the Piton de la Fournaise, symbol of Reunion Island. “In this deserted landscape, the drag presence reinvents these identities through the playback interpretation of a fictional narrative written for the first March of Visibilities in La Réunion, in 2021.”
His painted and costumed characters, like epic deities, fit naturally into this Creole environment. “This geological reading reveals how Brandon Gercara mobilizes art as a telluric force to reshape the social landscape of La Réunion: their creations are necessary eruptions that shake the layers of domination—gender, race, class—that have been transferred from colonialism.” They reflect the artist’s strong desire for emancipation.
The emancipation of the body is also Caroline Monnet’s quest. With “Echoes of a Near Future” exhibited in the industrial buildings of La Mécanique Générale, the French-Canadian artist showcases photographs of Indigenous women from Quebec. “Staring directly into the lens, in contrast to the anthropological, Eurocentric and overwhelmingly patriarchal approach of the past, these women resist the colonial hold.”
The elegance, charisma, and gentleness emanating from these women, photographed in their vibrantly colorful traditional attire, like pop divas, provides a welcome counterpoint to the negative image of Indigenous women too often portrayed in the media. And a renewed sense of optimism. “It engages a buoyant feeling for the future we will build together for the seven generations to come.”
These exhibitions can be discovered at the Rencontres de la photographie festival in Arles, from July 7 to October 5, 2025.
