Valerie Leray is a visual artist, photographer and artistic director of the artist alliance la mire. Leray began her artistic career as a ‘reportage photographer’ on subjects related to people ‘on the margins’ of society, and then questioned this approach with documentary and ‘conceptual’ photography centred around the material: history – when linked to the concept of ‘realms of memory’, as defined by historian Pierre Nora.
In her work, Leray explores the position of photography in history, the complexity of events and the notion of disappearing memories, and situates these themes in their geopolitical and geohistorical environment by revisiting the places where they took place. The return to the place becomes an artistic gesture. She is concerned with analysing the photographic medium and its inherent role of mnemonics and its ambivalence, leaning de facto towards one or the other necessary side of the past. Her series are exhibited in several countries, most recently at the 58th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art as part of the official exhibition FUTUROMA, and she was awarded the European mobility grant I-Portunus.
Sinti* und Roma* Kunst im Kontext KüRe #1, Dokumentations und Kulturzentrum Deutscher Sinti und Roma and Goethe Institut, Heidelberg, DE
BARVALO, Mucem, Marseille (FR)
SAMMLUNG KAI DIKHAS 2022, Stiftung Kai Dikhas, Berlin, (DE)
“Bonjour les gadjé!” – 59 RIVOLI , Paris (FR)
World Roma Art Congress exhibtion – Stiftung Kai Dikhas, Berlin (DE)
World Roma Art Congress exhibtion – no innoncent landscapes . ERIAC , Berlin (DE) (SOLO EXHIBITION)
WE ARE HERE – 2nd Roma Biennale . Berlin (DE)
FUTUROMA – Villa Romana . Florence (IT)
In the making fotonoviembre – Sac Sala de Arte Contemporaneo. Santa Cruz de Tenerife (SP)
FUTUROMA 58TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA PAVILLON ROMA – An Official Collateral exhibtion- Curated by DANIEL BAKER – Commissionned by ERIAC
Villa Heike & Other storie – Curated by Pierre Granoux & Michael Schaefer – Hohenschönhauesen, Berlin (DE)