Dancing Caryatid

Romain Ravera is the winner of the 2026 Écho des cimes Prize.

The aim of the “L’écho des cimes” prize is to support Villa Arson alumni and accompany them as young players in contemporary art across a whole territory, involving two emblematic venues:

1/ The contemporary art massif – L’Audibergue is managed by the Syndicat Mixte des stations de Gréolières-L’Audibergue (SMGA). Aware of the impact of climate change on the future of its ski resorts, the SMGA is working on a new dynamic for local life and tourism, and is creating a contemporary art trail on the Audibergue massif, for which the winner makes a work as a way of understanding and/or reading the landscape.

2/ The Espace de l’Art Concret – contemporary art centre of national interest, Mouans-Sartoux gives the winner the opportunity to present their work in an exhibition at the art centre.

Exhibition at the eac.: Romain Ravera • Dancing Caryatid

"If the caryatids stooped beneath the balconies, weary of bearing their load, decided to break free from their frozen fate; if beneath their mineral shell, condemned to eternal paralysis, there hid a skeleton covered in muscle that came to life on the façades, driving through their limestone arteries a seething blood whose slow pulses beat to the rhythm of a bronze heart, bringing warmth and movement to their inert bodies – then, as a final act of revolt, they might abandon themselves to a dance among the rubble, letting entire cities collapse, rolling the ruins of the old world beneath their steps.

One can wander through the palaces of one’s memory to better understand what is at work: thousands of images, contained in as many places, interlock in symbiotic expansion and structure our thinking. We then build veritable mental palaces in which we replay metaphysical scenes. While these scenes cross eras and individuals, the palaces themselves are unique to each of us. It is our way of belonging to the world that shapes their form, their materiality, their architecture. Motorway architecture is among the elements that shape Mon palais mental (My Mental Palace) – more precisely, when it is unfinished.

La possibilité d'un site (The Possibility of a Site) presents these fragments of motorway architecture at reduced scale. They are inspired by the “Ecomostri”, a term for unfinished buildings that leave a concrete skeleton in the landscape.

Vestiges of 1970s Italy, these incomplete structures are telescoped into an exhibition space and their status is reassessed. The cold light of neon tubes reveals fresh, smooth concrete and shiny metal reflecting an evanescent image of a bittersweet place of exile. I call them “bittersweet” because the concreting of our cities is helping to make the world uninhabitable. The sites where this now-hegemonic material is extracted and produced appear to me as concrete visions of a dystopian future.

These elements reappear in the series Maillon d'accouplement (Coupling Link). The series consists of devices that capture screen-printed images of cement works. Through tinted Plexiglas, black light reveals an iridescent image of their architecture. These sites, Dantesque in appearance, shape modernist architecture and evoke, almost prophetically, the ruins-to-be of the cities we inhabit."

— Romain Ravera

A 2023 graduate of the Villa Arson, Romain Ravera has exhibited in Marseille at the Château de Servières, in Paris at the Grande Halle de la Villette, and at the Fernand Léger art centre in Port-de-Bouc, among others.

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