The
Artist
Téo Becher
Lives and Works in
Born in 1991, I grew up in Nancy in north-eastern France.
Since 2011, I have been living and working in Brussels. I have a bachelor's degree in photography from ESA Le 75 and a master's degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Belgium).
My practice focuses on landscape and questions revolving around its use, exploitation and representation. Through my projects, I attempt to reflect on our relationship with what we call nature and to offer a different understanding of it.
In Brussels, in 2020, I co-founded the collective La Nombreuse, composed of eight photographers and an art historian. We opened a multifaceted space, part studio, part exhibition space, conference venue, workshop space, etc.
The monograph Charbon blanc was published in October 2021 by Le Bec en l'air. Since 2017, my work has been exhibited at various festivals and galleries in France and Belgium in particular.
My practice focuses on landscape and questions revolving around its use, exploitation and representation. Through my projects, I attempt to reflect on our relationship with what we call nature and to offer a different understanding of it.
In Brussels, in 2020, I co-founded the collective La Nombreuse, composed of eight photographers and an art historian. We opened a multifaceted space, part studio, part exhibition space, conference venue, workshop space, etc.
The monograph Charbon blanc was published in October 2021 by Le Bec en l'air. Since 2017, my work has been exhibited at various festivals and galleries in France and Belgium in particular.
Projects
2022
Alberta Crude
This project unfolds around Edmonton and Calgary in the oil-producing province of Alberta, Canada. The vast majority of Alberta’s oil operations are located in the far north of the province and consists of unconventional oil extracted from oil sands deposits : a type of oil that is found mixed with sand and therefore has to be ‘cleaned’, making its extraction highly polluting.
Here, the Canadian landscape and the relationship maintained with it appear as an extreme case of the ambivalence between protecting nature and exploiting it. Gradually, the idea of working around the two cities of Edmonton and Calgary emerged because they represent a system of relationship to the extractivist world that is in total contradiction with the history of the territory that is now Canada and the indigenous cosmologies that inhabit it.
Canada is a colonial state founded on the exploitation of resources (fur trade, mining, timber, oil, gas, uranium, etc.) which, at the same time, served to justify the presence of settlers and still serves today to consolidate the foundations of a cultural pride that is constitutive of Canadian identity. The presence and power of representations related to oil in Alberta culture is striking, and this is part of what lies at the heart of this project. The idea is to trace these different threads (oil, settler colonialism, the relationship to history) to see how they have shaped Canada today and to try to read transparently what this says about our relationship to the nature world.
Here, the Canadian landscape and the relationship maintained with it appear as an extreme case of the ambivalence between protecting nature and exploiting it. Gradually, the idea of working around the two cities of Edmonton and Calgary emerged because they represent a system of relationship to the extractivist world that is in total contradiction with the history of the territory that is now Canada and the indigenous cosmologies that inhabit it.
Canada is a colonial state founded on the exploitation of resources (fur trade, mining, timber, oil, gas, uranium, etc.) which, at the same time, served to justify the presence of settlers and still serves today to consolidate the foundations of a cultural pride that is constitutive of Canadian identity. The presence and power of representations related to oil in Alberta culture is striking, and this is part of what lies at the heart of this project. The idea is to trace these different threads (oil, settler colonialism, the relationship to history) to see how they have shaped Canada today and to try to read transparently what this says about our relationship to the nature world.
Téo Becher
FOMU
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Each year every member of the FUTURES European Photography Platform nominates a set of artists and projects to become part of the FUTURES network.
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