L'exposition Martine Dawson — « Faultlines » à la MEP

MEP Studio hosts, from 17 July to 13 September, "Faultlines", a photographic project by Martine Dawson dedicated to the houses of Butte, a former mining town in Montana, where the domestic space retains the persistent traces of a territory shaped by extraction and the imaginary of the American Wild West conquest.

Located in the heart of Montana, Butte developed in the late 19th century thanks to copper mining. This mining history profoundly transformed the landscape and structured social life. Today, the city seems suspended between memory and present.

Its streets, old houses, and lands marked by exploitation compose an environment that is both inhabited and spectral, where traces of an industrial past persist. Martine Dawson approaches this context through houses, seen as an entry point into local history.

Built quickly during the mining expansion, they have been transformed over time. Fragile foundations, successive additions, and repairs bear witness to uses linked to necessity.

During her stays, the artist observes how inhabitants maintain a connection with these places, where traces of the past remain in everyday gestures.

Through photographs of exteriors, interiors, and domestic details, Faultlines reveals the house as a space where temporalities overlap.

By combining contemporary images and archives, the exhibition highlights these dwellings as surfaces of memory, where mining history, imaginaries, and ways of living today intersect.