Éléphantart – Mémoires d’éléphants

Group exhibition of 131 contemporary artworks across three Nantes galleries – Paradise, RDV and the École des beaux-arts Nantes Saint-Nazaire.

The Paradise contemporary art centre, the École des beaux-arts Nantes Saint-Nazaire and the RDV gallery are delighted to invite you to the group exhibition Éléphantart – Mémoires d’éléphants, showing across three Nantes galleries from 14 November to 19 December 2026 (dates and opening hours vary from venue to venue).

46 years ago, Jean-Paul Sidolle, leaving the Musée des beaux-arts de Tours, met the motionless gaze of Fritz, a stuffed elephant. Shaken to learn shortly afterwards of the threat hanging over the species, he set out to buy back, one by one, every elephant-object he came across.

Trinkets, decorative or everyday objects, and figures diverted from their original animal form – all of them now make up a herd of 1,201 numbered elephant-objects.

From this collection grew a broader project carried by the association Mémoires d’éléphants: inviting artists from around the world and of every generation to dedicate a work to one of these elephants, as a gesture that would breathe new life into them.

To date, since 1990, 1,090 elephant-objects have received a dedicated work from 952 artists from 59 countries, many of whom have passed through the École des beaux-arts Nantes Saint-Nazaire, as students, teachers, or artists who have exhibited there or who remain connected to the city of Nantes.

Each of the galleries, Paradise, RDV and the École des beaux-arts, chose its artists according to the history that links them to it.

At the École des beaux-arts, Rozenn Le Merrer, the exhibition's curator, selected artists, teachers, graduates and staff whose works have a connection to the living world and the animal kingdom.

At the Paradise contemporary art centre and the RDV gallery, the curators Michel Gerson, Béatrice Dacher, Jean-François Courtilat and Pierre Fournier Le Ray chose artists who have already exhibited in their spaces.