Steffani Jemison arrives at the select program of Lafayette Anticipations

The American artist’s new exhibition investigates rebellion, atmosphere, and political tension through video, sculpture, and performance

Located in the heart of the Marais in Paris, Lafayette Anticipations has established itself as one of the most dynamic and forward-thinking institutions in the contemporary European art scene. Created by the Galeries Lafayette group, the foundation is dedicated to promoting new experiences through visual and performative arts, offering free exhibitions, festivals, and an ongoing program of education and creation. It is within this modular, process-driven space that American artist Steffani Jemison presents Clear Skies/Troubled Water, on view until February 8, 2026.

The result of a residency conducted at the foundation, the exhibition explores movements of emancipation, suppressed revolts, and the enduring tension between oppression and possibility. Drawing from events such as the 1831 uprising led by Nat Turner and the urban rebellions of 1967 in cities like Detroit and Newark, Jemison examines how natural phenomena – eclipses, winds, shifts in light and gravity –shape the political and symbolic experience of Black life in the United States. Here, atmosphere is not a backdrop: it is a sensitive force, a field of memory, and a stratification of tensions.

Known for moving fluidly between video, sculpture, and media platforms, Jemison uses movement and language as tools for both material and spiritual inquiry. Her interdisciplinary practice is grounded in archival research, experimentation, and the exploration of boundaries between bodily knowledge and historical narrative. In the exhibition, she deepens this approach by presenting the gesture of “flying” – literal or metaphorical – as a way to imagine alternate futures, however fleeting, within limits and structures of containment.

Born in Berkeley in 1981 and based in Brooklyn, Jemison has exhibited at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Biennial, the Stedelijk Museum, the Jeu de Paume, and the Wadsworth Atheneum. Her presence in Paris reinforces the significance of a body of work that rigorously and poetically weaves together themes of possibility, proximity, inheritance, structure, and narrative experimentation. In this presentation, the artist creates an environment where past and future mirror one another, and where gestures of escape, suspension, and breath become engines of political imagination. A call to perceive the invisible and recognize winds that – however brief – move histories. 

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Curated by Elsa Coustou, Sole Crushing by Meriem Bennani spans the full height of Lafayette Anticipations in a vibrant installation that examines togetherness and the individual’s place within a collective. Around 200 flip-flops, animated by a pneumatic system, perform a composition created with musician Reda Senhaji (Cheb Runner). The title plays with “soul-crushing,” transforming the sandals’ soles into instruments of rhythm and pulse. Adapted specifically for Paris after its debut at Fondazione Prada, the work evokes protests and rituals – such as dakka marrakchia – where steps, chants, and bodies merge into a shared force. On view until February 8, 2026.