Le Jeu de Paume presents the exhibition Jo Ractliffe : En ces lieux.
Born in Cape Town in 1961, Jo Ractliffe is an important figure in contemporary photography, though her work has nonetheless been little shown in France.
Ractliffe’s work is often associated with a discourse on violence and the way it manifests in the landscape, marked by the legacy of colonialism, apartheid, and the scars left by conflicts in countries such as Angola.
From the perspective of documentary photography, the singularity of her artistic approach lies in the way she represents the relationship between presence and absence. Her images, far from illustrating facts and socio-political events, encourage viewers to look beyond the surface and to identify stories buried within landscapes.
For the first time, this monographic exhibition proposes to question the notion of “place” as a central theme in her work. For the artist, the sites she photographs are not merely geographic situations or terrains shaped by violence and history; they are also places that carry memory.
Each of her photographic series—and her videos—forms part of a process: an exploration of various aspects of South African history. Her work thus goes beyond mere representation to offer a visual exploration of situations, conflict zones, and the traces of deep social rifts created by the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The exhibition traces forty years of work, from Jo Ractliffe’s beginnings to her very latest series, The Garden, shown here for the first time and produced with the support of the Jeu de Paume.
Jo Ractliffe : En ces lieux
30 January – 24 May 2026
Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries
75001 Paris
Metro Concorde (lines 1, 8, 12)
www.jeudepaume.org
