Nuits Balnéaires

Multidisciplinary artist and poet Nuits Balnéaires was born and raised in Abidjan, into a family with Akan Agni-Bona and Malinké origins. With intimate connections to both peoples’ traditions, culture and spirituality, his work creates a parallel space-time beyond the constraints of geography, while embracing the universality of oceans as the connective tissue between worlds.

Nuits Balnéaires cultivates powerful ties with the energy of the Gulf of Guinea and  its landscapes, hence the omnipresence of water in his photographic practice, films and poetry. Haunted by the duality of life and death, and the possibility of communication between these states, his works convey a euphoric sense of tranquillity that feels both classical and contemporary.  

In 2019, Nuits Balnéaires settled in Grand-Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire, to develop his artistic practice, drawing on his years as a fashion and conceptual photographer. He secured  a one-year bursary in visual journalism with the World Press Photo Foundation, and was among the winners of a 2020 call for projects from the Goethe-Institut and the Prince Claus Fund, which supports cultural and artistic responses to environmental change. Nuits Balnéaires’s work has been exhibited at Art X Lagos, Paris’s 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, FNB Art Johannesburg, and in numerous exhibitions across Côte  d’Ivoire, Canada, the US, the UK, France, the Netherlands and Australia.

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