Arles 2026: Our Top Picks

Every edition of the Rencontres d'Arles leaves us with a handful of exhibitions that continue to resonate long after we've left. Here are a few of the artists, curators, and installations that moved us most this year—thought-provoking, visually striking, and impossible to forget.

Martine Barrat : These are the breakers, Block Party, Harlem, 1984

Palais de l'Archevêché — Ghana! Dreaming Independence, 1957-1976 Curated by Damarice Amao, fantastic from start to finish. Built around Felicia Abban, James Barnor, Paul Strand and Marc Riboud, the show traces how photography shaped the image of a nation just coming into being. What stays with us most is the dialogue with two major contemporary artists, Rita Mawuena Benissan and Carlos Idun-Tawiah, who keep this legacy an open, living question.

Église des Trinitaires — Sammy Baloji, Prism Landscape: A Katangese Crossing A work carried out with anthropologist Filip De Boeck, retracing the Katangese secession alongside the artist's own family history. Colonial archives, vernacular testimonies, and contemporary photographs speak to each other to tell the story of Congo differently.

Abbaye de Montmajour — Ayana V. Jackson, The Good News Is Not Proclaimed From the Mountaintops But in the Clearings Powerful equestrian portraits and staged scenes, where the artist embodies forgotten figures from history to restore their dignity and presence.

Cloître Saint-Trophime — Lara Tabet & Yasmine Chemali, The Vitreous Body Water samples taken from ports and industrial zones, transformed into contemporary stained glass. An unexpected, poetic way of making pollution visible.

Espace Van Gogh — Martine Barrat, Soul of the City Stunning images, and an inspiring woman. First a dancer, later a chronicler of the South Bronx and Harlem, Barrat photographs their residents with rare respect and tenderness.

Chapelle Saint-Martin du Méjan — Harry Gruyaert, A Sense of Place From New York to Mumbai by way of Antwerp, half a century of wandering where color and geometry turn the ordinary into something almost theatrical.

Église Sainte-Anne — Ming Smith, Nomadic Light Blurred, flickering, almost spectral images — Black identity as something fluid and in motion rather than fixed. A proposition of pure gentleness.