raphaëlle peria carves nature’s decay onto photos in BMW's rencontres d’arles exhibition

BMW presents Raphaëlle Peria and Fanny Robin in arles

Combining carving techniques and childhood photographs, artist Raphaëlle Peria showcases the progressive environmental decay of the Canal du Midi at BMW’s Rencontres d’Arles 2025 exhibition. Curated by Fanny Robin, Traversée du fragment manquant (Crossing the Missing Fragment) is on view until October 5th, 2025, at Cloître Saint-Trophime in Arles, France. In this new body of work, Peria revisits her childhood photographs from her father’s archives. Here, she retraces the path of the plane trees from her first journey along the canal, which are now under threat with the presence of a fungus called canker stain.

During designboom’s visit to the exhibition, the artist explains what she recalls of her journey on the Canal du Midi, a 240km long canal in the south of France. ‘There is a big problem here: a mushroom with a disease came in the trees, and they will die in a few years. We don’t know exactly when, and if we don’t find a solution for this mushroom, we have to cut down all the trees. There were 72,000 trees and we cut 42,000 of them, and we continue. They lasted for 200 years, so they were very big trees, and that’s why the canal was designated part of UNESCO heritage. When I found out about this story, I said we have a project that’s about water, about trees, and it’s here in the countryside,’ she says.

Le reflet de ce qu’il reste by Raphaëlle Peria | all images courtesy of BMW ART MAKERS

photographic artworks at les rencontres d’arles festival

The photographic artworks that Raphaëlle Peria has worked on for BMW’s Rencontres d’Arles 2025 exhibition are from her father’s archives. ‘It’s the first time I’ve worked on others’ pictures and not mine, as well as introducing humans in photos because usually, I take pictures of the landscape. It’s also the first time I’ve worked with transparency. I often take my photo, print it, and scratch on the paper. The photo paper, then, has two different layers: one white and one with the color,’ she explains during the exhibition tour. The artist’s technique is mainly scratching the surface of a photograph, which then reveals the white paper underneath. By doing so, the original photo adopts more details, sharpened and underlined by the appearances and shadows of the scratches.

However, for BMW’s Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025 exhibition, curated by Fanny Robin, the artist prints some of the archival images on plexiglas for the first time. ‘There’s no white behind, but it’s transparent. The final result is a photo, but it’s also a drawing and a sculpture. If you turn it around on one side, you will see the photo. On the other side, it’s more like a drawing. That’s important because I started as an engraver, so my work is always between photo, engraving, and now maybe a bit of sculpture,’ says Raphaëlle Peria. In some of the exhibited photographs, she used copper to indicate the leaves of the trees. ‘Why copper? Because when the mushrooms came, all the trees took on a copper-like color. So as you walk across the exhibition, you see the copper taking over more and more of the vegetation in the images,’ the artist adds.

Cueillir les murmures by Raphaëlle Peria

Showcasing the past and present through etchings

Around BMW’s Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025 exhibition, the artist displays photographs of the healthy trees in the past, the ones being slowly eradicated by canker stain. The fungus enters through the bark and spreads inside, destroying the trees from within, and it cannot be stopped easily. As a result, many of the trees that were healthy in the artist’s childhood photos are now dying or gone. Some are already cut down, burned, or broken, and the forest in the pictures no longer exists in the same way. From here, Raphaëlle Peria decided to immortalize these trees by showing them in their healthy state and natural changes. She hopes that through the scratches onto the images’ surface, the viewers can see what they might lose if they fail to take care of the environment. The etchings, then, are a means for her to show that pieces of nature start to fade away. 

The lines and scratches she makes elaborate the passage of time and the loss of the trees, and the artist uses these physical ‘damages’ to the photographs as a way to express the natural impacts of nature on nature. Her sculptural and photographic works also underline the past and present: what used to be there and what is now gone. Hence, the exhibition’s name is Crossing the Missing Fragment. ‘When you’re in the landscape, you have the grass under your foot; you can touch it, you want to touch it. The engravings in my works here are only on the plants and trees at the moment. Why? Because for me, the things I engrave are the things that will disappear. French philosopher Michel Pastoureau said white is the color of what we have forgotten. So then I say, we will forget these trees. They will disappear. They will become white, like the color of the ghost,’ she says. By carving scaly husks onto the photographs from her past and showcasing them at BMW’s Rencontres d’Arles 2025 exhibition, Raphaëlle Peria reminds the viewers how art can help remember and preserve what is slowly disappearing.

etchings revealing the white paper beneath | Lever les voiles sur le passé by Raphaëlle Peria

15 YEARS OF BMW FRANCE AND Les Rencontres d’Arles

Raphaëlle Peria and Fanny Robin’s Traversée du fragment manquant is the winning entry of the BMW ART MAKERS Program, an initiative that grants a fellowship to an artist-curator duo, along with funding for research and the production of their works. The program brings together and supports an emerging visual artist and curator in the joint creation of an original artistic project. The exhibition marks the 15th anniversary of a long-standing cultural partnership between BMW France and Les Rencontres d’Arles, and it is currently on display at the photo festival and will move to Paris Photo 2025, where BMW is also an official partner, from November 13th to 16th, 2025, at the Grand Palais in Paris, France.

L’écho des rires se mua en silence / The echo of laughter turned to silence (close-up), scratching on photographs enhanced with copper leaf, 2025

Sur les berges les platanes #1 / Along the banks, the plane trees #1, Ritzungen auf Kupferplatte, 2025

L’écho des rires se mua en silence / The echo of laughter turned to silence, scratching on photographs enhanced with copper leaf, 2025

Rien n’est à la fois beau et vral / Nothing is both beautiful and true, scratching on copper wallpaper, 2025

from left to right: Le reflet de ce qu’il reste / The reflection of what remains and Un atoll sur les eaux / An atoll on the water, scratching on photographs enhanced with copper leaf, 2025

from left to right: Le reflet de ce qu’il reste / The reflection of what remains and Un atoll sur les eaux / An atoll on the water, scratching on photographs enhanced with copper leaf, 2025

Lever les voiles sur le passé (close-up), scratching on copper wallpaper, 2025

detailed view of the scratches

BMW Group France presents a preview of ‘Traversée du fragment manquant’ by the prize winners of the BMW ART MAKERS program, Raphaëlle Peria and Fanny Robin, before the rencontres d’Arles

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Ce qui me ronge / What devours me, scratching on plexis, 2025

Ils étaient quarante deux mille / They were forty-two thousand (detail), scratching on plexis, 2025

Lever les voiles sur le passé, scratching on copper wallpaper, 2025

BMW Group France presents a preview of ‘Traversée du fragment manquant’ by the prizewinners of the BMW ART MAKERS programme before the rencontres d’Arles

project info:

exhibition name: Traversée du fragment manquant (Crossing the Missing Fragment)

artist: Raphaëlle Peria | @raphaelleperia

curator: Fanny Robin | @fanny__robin

festival: Les Rencontres d’Arles 2025 | @rencontresarles

partner: BMW France | @bmwfrance

location: Robin Cloître Saint-Trophime, Arles

dates: July 7th to October 5th, 2025