Agnès Varda. Je suis curieuse. Point.

In 2025, the Mediterranean Sea arrives in Rodez with its horizon, blue and calm, its fishermen, its beaches, its plastic toys, its cabins, its events—in short, its vibrant life and the portrait that Agnès Varda painted of it over all these years and the fond memories it leaves in each of us.

 

Agnès Varda (1928-2019) is a major figure in cinema and photography, who made a name for herself later in life in the visual arts. The Soulages Museum has decided to pay tribute to her in the summer of 2025: Agnès Varda. I'm curious. Period (June 28, 2025 - January 4, 2026).

 

Agnès Varda, photographer and filmmaker, had a rich career that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s. She is part of the history of world cinema. After working as a photographer for the TNP (Théâtre National Populaire) and Jean Vilar's troupe for the Avignon Festival, it was cinema that took up most of her time: close to Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, William Klein and, of course, Jacques Demy, who would become her partner, Agnès Varda shared her sociological and imaginative appetite within this small group known as the “Rive Gauche” (Left Bank). Together, they distinguished themselves from the “Rive Droite” group led by young filmmakers and critics from Cahiers du cinéma, including Godard, Rivette, Rohmer, and Truffaut.

 

Agnès Varda's works deal with political and social issues, such as feminist demands (“Women are right to shout,” she said in 2017). Her prolific filmography includes her first feature film, La Pointe Courte, shot in Sète (1955), Cléo de 5 à 7 (1961), L'une chante l'autre pas (1977), the stunning Sans toit ni loi (1985)—which won the Golden Lion at the Mostra in Venice that same year—and many other fiction films, followed by numerous feature-length documentaries, including Mur murs (1981), Les Plages d'Agnès (2008), and Visages, Villages, co-directed with the artist JR in 2017. Agnès Varda's visual universe is varied and abundant, capable of being developed in original ways.

 

Since 2003, Agnès Varda has been working as a visual artist, creating installations, projections, multiple screens, and through ingenious recycling: astonishing cinema huts. It all began at the Venice Biennale in 2003, then in numerous institutions such as the Fondation Cartier (2006), the 10th Lyon Contemporary Art Biennale (2009), Le Voyage à Nantes (2012), and the Domaine de Chaumont in 2019 for her last solo exhibition.

 

The Soulages Museum exhibition project draws on the friendship between Pierre and Colette Soulages and Agnès Varda in Sète, a bond she immortalized in Agnès de ci de là Varda: the Soulages Museum has a number of photographs of the painter taken by the filmmaker and her crew. An interview with Soulages about his Outrenoir paintings is shown in the museum's permanent exhibition rooms. Their friendly and informative encounter provides a wonderful accompaniment for our visitors.

 

In a way, we wanted to continue the exchange, to open it up widely in Rodez with the presentation of Varda's work.

 

The Rodez exhibition is an ode to curiosity: freely combining her photographic collection from the filming of La Pointe Courte (compositions on the world of the port, fishermen, and the Mediterranean) with the construction of huts and numerous evocations of the sea and beaches in her work as a visual artist: Bord de mer (2009), La petite mer immense (2003), Ping-Pong Tong (2005-2006), Le dépôt de la Cabane de Plage (2011), La Cabane du Bonheur (2018), and other unpublished color photographs of Noirmoutier and its fishermen's huts. The setting of the 1965 film Le Bonheur will be evoked poetically through flowers, sunflowers, bouquets in vases by Valentine Schlegel, and a few photographs from the film shoot. This combination of black-and-white and color photographs, objects, and film installations creates a unique journey, a scenography unfolding like a story.

 

The singularly silent photography of the early days will be extended with visual and non-visual writing, objects... It represents a part of Varda, a major feature of her modus operandi.

 

The exhibition embodies her research and her passions as an artist. We are combining the exhibition as a whole with a familiar environment, i.e. works by the painter and friend Pierre Soulages, works by Valentine Schlegel, Miquel Barceló, models, and objects. There will be a tribute to Gustave le Gray (1820-1884), the pioneering photographer of the sea and sky, who photographed the sea.

 

The exhibition, comprising more than 150 items, unfolds like a story, that of a life that brings Agnès Varda back to the sea.

 

The Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the ebb and flow, the detail and the immensity form the cornerstone of Varda's spirit.

 

Benoît Decron, chief heritage curator, director of the Soulages Museum.

 

The exhibition is co-produced with Ciné Tamaris.