Bourse du Talent 2026 : Nicolas Lebeau

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In Would You Wear My Eyes?, Nicolas Lebeau examines the systems of control that increasingly shape contemporary urban space, from defensive architecture to surveillance technologies. In response to the brutalization of reality and the growing dominance of a security-oriented gaze upon the world, his work develops forms of resistance grounded in the alteration of the visible.

Considering that images—and photography in particular—also participate in mechanisms of power and predation, he has developed a practice that oscillates between revelation and concealment. Through defective photographs printed on modified printers, he stages marginalized and vulnerable lives while confronting them with images collected from Telegram channels documenting contemporary conflicts and political struggles around the world. These “poor images” become tools for constructing counter-narratives to dominant media representations.

His work also includes images rendered illegible through digital manipulation, as well as portraits made during moments of prayer within a religious community. In this way, he chooses the refuge of the sacred against the overtly profane language of surveillance and quantification; slowness, loss, and fragility against the imperatives of productivity; drifting lives as a means of escaping the prescribed paths of technocracy.
It is there, he suggests, that antibodies may be produced and that an immune response to the violence of control might emerge. And he poses a question: do systems of control truly protect us from danger, or do they invent and sustain the very threats they claim to guard against?

Born in Paris in 1992, Nicolas Lebeau is a Franco-Brazilian artist who lives and works between Paris and Rio de Janeiro.
As a teenager, it was through skateboarding that he first discovered photography, teaching himself the medium through online forums. In 2019, he enrolled at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy, from which he graduated with highest honours in 2024.
His work has been widely published in magazines including Numéro, Fisheye, Fvtvrist, Vogue, This Is Paper, and Opium Philosophie, and has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions. These include exhibitions at Galerie Mennour as part of its Emergence programme (2025), at the Grande Halle de La Villette for 100% L’EXPO (2025), at the Fondation Francès (2024–2025), and at the Ygrec Art Centre (2024).
In 2026, he presented his first solo exhibition with Galerie Mennour and participated in ARCO Madrid with the French Institute of Spain.
Nicolas Lebeau has received several awards and distinctions, including the Encore ! Grant from the Groupe Chessé Endowment Fund (2026), the Mennour Emergence Prize (2025), finalist status for the SAIF x La Kabine Revelation Prize (2026), and the Paris Photo Student Carte Blanche (2025).