Agnès Geoffray | Arles 2025
August 14, 2025
In Agnès Geoffray’s They Stray, They Persist, They Thunder, expertly curated by Vanessa Desclaux, institutionalized girls from the past come to life. The models are falling, fleeing, challenging, suspended on the wall in acts of resistance in Geoffray’s imagined portraits. Everyone we spoke with loved this exhibition, and all seemed equally surprised by it.
The show made viewers want to know all about the lives of the real girls, who have been largely ignored for a century. People were impatient for their chance to read through old newspaper scraps on the walls. How did Geoffray and Desclaux accomplish this level of interest?
The presentation is surprisingly minimal- an entire room contains only three slide projectors showing a hand, or the eyes, with a few fragments of overlaid text, but these elements hit with so much force.
The only color in the show comes from sheets of neon coral acrylic, with black and white prints and texts mounted behind them. This material has the strange property of refracting light so that it appears to glow from within. Pink is stereotypically feminine, but this particular neon shade has veered off into something that feels defiant and more complicated. The coral glow is vibrant and seductive, but it verges towards a tone that is radioactive, unnatural or even a little dangerous. Either way, it is loud, unapologetic and demands your attention.
