The exhibition La nuit américaine, presented by the Jeu de Paume at the Château de Tours, draws on the artistic research of Laila Hida, which focuses on the nature of images and photography, exploring them both as tools for examining the contemporary world and as devices capable of triggering processes of fiction.

The project Le Voyage du Phoenix investigates the construction and mythologisation of oasis landscapes within the collective imagination, questioning the processes through which representation is constructed through photography, literature, and cinema. Where does the boundary lie between a real landscape and one constructed to appear as such? Where can the line be drawn between imagination and experience? Laila Hida makes the mechanisms of fiction visible, revealing the artifice underlying images and placing the viewer before what they see — or believe they see.
For the artist, an image can never be fully perceived: there is always a kind of filter, a membrane, between the image and the viewer that protects them from the experience being represented. It is precisely within this space that interpretation, fantasy, and manipulation can take place.The exhibition thus invites us to reflect on the ways in which visual narratives are constructed, transformed, and transmitted, ultimately producing images so familiar that they come to appear natural and unquestionable. But what happens when the distance between what is real and what is constructed becomes impossible to discern?

Date: from June 19 to November 8, 2026
More Info: Jeu de Paume

Image: © Laila Hida
Sange Khara, 2025

25/09/26