Samuel Perche

If identity is what is expressed through the body, then "revealing the intimacy of an individual and communal desire" emerges as a paradigm in Samuel Perche's work, questioning the silenced and invisible aspects of a queer identity in flux. Underlying his words and his work is a need for healing: for individual and collective wounds, for the traumatized imaginaries of both the past and the present. His work conveys a sense of urgency.

"I am a gay and queer artist. It's the prism through which everything permeates my artistic work and my life: it's a way of caring."

Her journey is part of a history that is both personal and collective, oscillating between intimate stories and community struggles - whether feminist, queer or LGBTQIA+.

A videographer, then an actor for theater and television in Paris for ten years, he moved to Réunion Island in 2013. He graduated from the École Supérieure d'Art (School of Fine Arts) in 2017 at the age of 37 and began exhibiting his work as a sculptor and painter. Simultaneously, he participated in organizing the first LGBTQIA+ Visibility March in Réunion and in creating the Indian Ocean LGBTQIA+ Center, while also being involved as a cultural player in the island's arts scene. In 2017, he presented his first solo exhibition of monumental sculptures, Ali@Corpus, at the TEAT Champ Fleuri Gallery. From 2019 to 2021, he worked as artistic director and communications manager at L'enVoL, the leading development agency for artists and related organizations, as well as a project manager for the Réunion des Talents Fund. In 2022, he became involved as coordinator of LGBTQIA+ initiatives in Réunion at the LGBTQIA+ Center, which he co-founded. As an exhibition curator, he presented Terra Incognita 1 and 2, as well as Au loin s'en viennent at the Pavillon Martin of the FRAC in Réunion, and later in Tianjin, China. NO·MAN·MEN, presented in 2022, was his first solo exhibition of paintings.

It is today in Rennes, in his native Brittany, where he is returning to settle in 2024, that he continues to explore the idea of desire, bodies, homoeroticism, in order to question our representations and our identities.