This exhibition brings together video works from the FRAC Corsica collection – each tracing the paths of women caught between displacement, memory, and erasure. Through sparse gestures, traversed landscapes, and reassembled archives, these films suggest alternative ways of inhabiting a world that often withdraws or breaks apart. Far from offering a single narrative, the exhibition embraces fragments – stories that emerge through the texture of moving images. Here, we encounter an Uzbek activist erased from official histories, an Iranian survivor whose presence merges with the branches of a tree, a Mediterranean figure wielding both seduction and defiance, and a contemporary siren diving through the ruins of a Roman city swallowed by the sea. These presences speak not from the center, but from the edges – from places marked by dispossession, forced migration, or the demand to vanish. And yet, they persist. They return through the image, transformed. Rather than offering a message, these works create a space of resonance – where filmed bodies become sites of projection, attention, and quiet insistence. We do not hear confessions, but traces. What we witness is a form of resilience that doesn’t seek visibility so much as it claims duration.This exhibition is presented in dialogue with Wonder Women – a program initiated by the Domus Art Residency in Galatina – as part of an ongoing curatorial exchange shaped by shared concerns and affinities
Emilija Škarnulytė, Sunken Cities
In Sunken Cities, Emilija Škarnulytė merges documentary, mythology, and performance through the figure of the siren — a creature at once ancient and speculative. Filmed in the submerged ruins of Baiae, a Roman resort city swallowed by the sea, the video follows the artist, trained in monofin diving, as she silently navigates underwater remnants of former grandeur. Baiae was famed for its volcanic hot springs and therapeutic architecture. But by the 16th century, it had been abandoned – its ruins gradually engulfed by the sea due to the same geothermal forces that once made it flourish. Gliding through the remains of a vanished civilization, the artist’s presence evokes both loss and transformation. The work invites reflection on the impermanence of power, the fragility of built environments, and the ways in which history resurfaces – half-erased, half-imagined. The siren, both witness and survivor, becomes a vessel through which we contemplate deep time and the uneasy continuity between past and future.
Agnès Accorsi, L’Âme hospitalière
On the Corsican shoreline, a woman strolls – calm, enigmatic – evoking a cinematic memory: perhaps a distant echo of Marianne Renoir walking alongside Ferdinand Griffon in Pierrot le fou. But here, the figure carries a machine gun. Neither passive muse nor romantic rebel, she merges both roles, embodying seduction and danger in a single gesture. Like the jellyfish drifting beneath the surface of the Mediterranean, her presence signals both beauty and threat. Between the nonchalance of summer and the latent violence of armed resistance, the film inhabits a zone of tension. The title – L’Âme hospitalière, or “The Hospitable Soul” – borrows a lyric from Adamo’s 1969 song Les Filles du bord de mer, but strips it of its male gaze and nostalgic softness. What remains is a woman without narrative, without context — and without apology. The work quietly undermines familiar roles assigned to women in both cinema and collective memory. The character’s anonymity becomes a stance: she no longer needs someone else’s story to assert her own.
Niyaz Azadikhah, Refuge (2020)
Refuge unfolds in a symbolic landscape where trees are formed by the silhouettes of women wearing the hijab. Their bodies, fused with trunks and branches, stand as pillars of strength, stillness, and protection. In the background, a few solitary figures move toward these shelters – fragile presences seeking comfort in a world marked by instability. The video evokes the precariousness of displacement and the longing for a place of safety, while quietly celebrating sorority as a political force. These trees are not just metaphors – they are guardians, memory-holders, spaces where collective care takes root. In a world fractured by violence and erasure, Refuge becomes a vision of resistance shaped by empathy and endurance.
Bouchra Khalili, Anya (Straight Stories – Part 2)
Anya is the second chapter of Bouchra Khalili’s Straight Stories series, which explores narratives of migration through personal testimonies. In this video, a young Iraqi woman recounts her journey: after fleeing Iraq, she has lived in Turkey for twelve years, awaiting a visa to join an uncle in Australia. She works illegally, without status, suspended in a geographical and administrative limbo. The camera never shows Anya. Only her calm and determined voice testifies to her presence. This formal choice underscores the tension between visibility and erasure, between existence and absence. The wintry landscape of Istanbul becomes a mirror of a frozen destiny, a life in perpetual transit. Anya’s intimate narration, devoid of pathos, reveals the strength of those who, despite waiting and uncertainty, continue to believe in a possible future.
Saodat Ismailova, Her Right
Her Right brings together legendary women from Uzbek cinema – heroines whose gestures, silences, and gazes have shaped the collective imagination. The title is borrowed from a 1934 film directed by G. Cherniak. Through a montage of scenes from classic Uzbek films, Saodat Ismailova revisits the country’s history and highlights the overlooked role women played in its evolution. The film references the Hujum, a Soviet campaign launched in 1924 aimed at “liberating” Muslim women, notably by banning the veil. While officially presented as an emancipatory project, the campaign was often perceived locally as a violent process of cultural erasure – a forced alignment with Soviet values and Russian norms. The veil, far from being only a religious marker, had become for many a symbol of cultural identity. Her Right uses excerpts from films by directors such as Latif Fayziyev, Ali Khamrayev, and Shukhrat Abbasov, spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s. These fragments, drawn from VHS and BetaCam copies unearthed in private archives, are set to a soundtrack by London-based musician Seaming To. Through this assemblage of silent cinema, the film reflects on the complex role of film as a political tool, while honoring the resilience of women – both on screen and behind it — in the making of a national consciousness.
Natacha Lesueur, Maramarama,
A forest emerges, bathed in a monochromatic red light, creating a surreal and unsettling atmosphere. The absence of human presence and the apparent stillness of the scene heighten the sense of unreality and solitude. Lesueur’s deliberate choice to saturate the scene in red radically alters our natural perception of the tree motifs. This red monochrome can be interpreted in various ways: perhaps it evokes urgency, danger, passion, or violence. This single color modification invites the viewer to project their own feelings or interpretations onto what would otherwise be a natural and peaceful scene. In the context of Lesueur’s work, which often explores the relationships between appearance and reality, as well as image manipulation to reveal what is hidden to the naked eye, the red may symbolize the filter through which we see the world, a world altered by cultural and personal perceptions. The derealization produced by the red color in Maramaramaunderscores the idea that what we see is a construction. Lesueur reminds us that art is not a mere reproduction of reality but a creation that reflects the artist’s vision and intentions, allowing for a deeper exploration of themes and emotions. The presence of palm trees suggests that the title could be a word of Polynesian origin, often meaning “clarity” or “light” in several languages of that region. In this context, the title might refer to a kind of revelation or illumination, in any case, an awakening.
