Nuits Balnéaires

In recent years, Nuits Balnéaires has developed a hybrid practice. The Ivorian artist operates at the crossroads of fine arts, fashion, and research. His influences blend cinema, literature, theatre, performance, and cultural history.

His life is both rooted in the small coastal town of Grand-Bassam, east of Abidjan, and open to multiple international cultural communities. Eboro was created as part of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès’ Latitudes programme, of which Nuits Balnéaires is the second laureate.

This project introduces a more autobiographical dimension to Nuits Balnéaires' work. The project begins in Dakar, Senegal: on 22 July 1986, his uncle Noël X. Ebony, a renowned journalist and playwright, disappeared under enigmatic circumstances.

“There is an inexplicable bond between us, perhaps stemming from a transgenerational memory,” confides Nuits Balnéaires.

In the Agni-Bona tradition of Côte d’Ivoire, which the artist is deeply immersed in, the nephew plays a key role in accompanying the uncle in his passage to the afterlife.

For Nuits Balnéaires, this took the form of an exploration of how previous trajectories – historical or familial – influence or predetermine our own life paths.

Nuits Balnéaires conceived Eboro intuitively, allowing the affective power of places and family memory to shape the interconnected visual chapters of this multi-layered work.

He embraces the melancholy and trauma linked to his uncle's story with gentleness and hope, questioning how imagination can contribute to healing transgenerational wounds.