Dive into “The Sea Around Us” at the Nice Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025

Since 2013, the Nice Biennale has celebrated the artistic ethos and creative spirit of the coastal French city, where famous painters, including Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall, found inspiration. This year, the sixth edition of the biennial coincides with the third United Nations Oceans Conference in Nice, with cultural, scientific, and research projects across the city dedicated to the theme “The Sea Around Us.” On view through October 31, the city offers a varied, multidisciplinary program that emphasizes the critical importance of our oceans, particularly the Mediterranean, which is central to daily life and civic identity in Nice. 

Nice Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025

The theme of this year’s Nice Biennale is borrowed from marine biologist Rachel Carson’s seminal 1951 book, The Sea Around Us, which presented a holistic view of the oceans from biological, anthropological, historical, and philosophical perspectives. Carson’s writing also raised early warnings about the health of our oceans — issues that are now at stake in world leaders’ discussions at the United Nations Oceans Conference.

The Biennale is conceived as a celebration of oceanic life, an acknowledgment of its fragility, and an urgent appeal for its conservation from harmful human activities. “We marvel at the nocturnal migration of marine organisms, their bioluminescence, the beauty of corals, and the mysteries revealed by the abyss,” explain curators Jean-Jacques Aillagon and Hélène Guenin, “even as the conditions that have nurtured this life are changing drastically.”

The program features eleven exhibitions, alongside installations and events hosted at seven museums across the city (several of which are highlighted below), as well as at Le 109, the city’s cultural venue, and Villa Arson. These projects explore different facets of our relationship with the ocean, from the early inhabitants of the Côte d’Azur to thematic works by contemporary artists. For the first time, the Biennial extends into public spaces, featuring a tour throughout the city featuring six works of art. Highlights include: CHOI + SHINE Architects’ Urchin (2024), made from hand-crocheted fishing rope, Laure Prouvost’s octopus tentacles emerging from a lawn in Landed Here to Sea You With All Our Very Breasts (2023), and Joël Andrianomearisoa’s word sculpture Songer la vague sur un horizon une promesse (Dreaming of the wave on a horizon, a promise) (2025).

Musée Matisse

One of the seven museums participating in the Nice Biennale, Musée Matisse hosts the exhibition Matisse Méditerranée(s), which explores the region’s profound impact on Henri Matisse (1869–1954). From his first visit to Corsica in 1898, to his frequent stays in Nice from 1917 until his death in 1954, the painter explored chromatic and formal innovations, and discovered new motifs. 

“Far from being a simple idyllic setting, the Mediterranean was for Matisse an artistic laboratory where he reinvented the codes of Western painting,” says museum director Aymeric Jeudy, “influencing his artistic language, his color palette, and his vision of the world.” Through a selection of over 150 works, several of which have rarely been shown in France, the exhibition seeks to reevaluate Matisse’s oeuvre through the prism of the Mediterranean and his relationship to it.

The exhibition explores several key themes and motifs, including the bather, the Mediterranean light (as seen through studio windows), and marine life (both actual and mythical). In addition to works drawn from the Musée Matisse collection, the exhibition includes loans from prominent institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Saint Louis Art Museum; and Centre Pompidou, Paris.

La Villa Masséna

Through the exhibition Nice, from the Shore to the Sea, La Villa Masséna explores the relationship the city has maintained with the Mediterranean throughout its history. The villa dates back to the Napoleonic era, so the building and its 19th-century state rooms bear witness to many of the city’s storied milestones, including its establishment as a winter resort for Europe’s elite. 

Presented as part of the Biennale, Nice, from the Shore to the Sea traces how the city has continually reinvented its connection to the shoreline, from prehistory to the present. At times, fearing the threat of invasion, the city has insulated itself against the coast, but more often, Nice has embraced the Mediterranean sea as a horizon of possibility. These ideas are outlined in seven thematic galleries: the Mediterranean’s role in civic identity; the city’s Greek origins; religious migrations; coastal incursions; the role of the port; marine flora and fauna; the rise of resort holidays; and contemporary ocean conservation.

Echoing the words of the poet Paul Valéry from 1933, the exhibition positions Nice as “the place for the development of Mediterranean knowledge, the point where an increasingly clear and complete awareness of the role of this privileged sea in the development of human ideals and resources is formed.”

Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret

At the Musée des Beaux-Arts Jules Chéret, Racca Vammerisse’s solo exhibition Les reliques de l’écume presents a biotope of ceramic forms drawn from the ocean’s depths. Incorporating pearls, shells, tentacles, pincers, and coral, these chimeric creations also reference France’s rich history of decorative arts, ranging from Bernard Palissy in the Renaissance to Vallauris in the 19th century.

In works such as Mytulus Voracephale (2023), these decorative associations are undercut by a sense of the monstrous, with half-open mussels and giant whelks revealing fleshy tentacles. Many of the works also contain references to Greek mythology, such as Hebe, the personification of eternal youth and daughter of Zeus, or to mythical creatures, such as dragons. The installation is brought to life by a delicate soundscape composed by Fred Leonard.

Vammerisse’s sculptures are placed in dialogue with the Musée des Beaux-Arts collection, which represents the history of art from the 12th through the 20th century. The villa was originally built in 1878 by Elisabeth Kotschoubey, wife of an adviser to Tsar Alexander II. The introduction of contemporary artworks invites a fresh interpretation of its eclectic decor and historical collection.

Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre

The Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre is presenting two solo exhibitions on the theme of the ocean, showcasing the work of Laurent Ballesta and Manon Lanjouère. On June 13, the museum will also host the choreographic performance Above the Tears, conceived by Sophie Boursier as an ode to aquatic time and space.

In Seas and Mysteries, 53 photographs by Laurent Ballesta chart a journey beneath the ice of the Adélie Sea, revealing Antarctica’s marine flora and fauna and inviting visitors to experience the mysteries of its undersea world. These include the mass spawning of thousands of groupers, the underside of an iceberg, and the submerged wreck of a cargo ship. As a biologist, researcher, explorer, and photographer, Ballesta is dedicated to highlighting both the beauty of nature and the environmental issues that threaten it.

Manon Lanjouère’s exhibition, Particles, The Human Tale of Dying Water, examines the catastrophic impact of plastic pollution on the world’s oceans. Following a residency aboard the scientific schooner Tara in 2021, Lanjouère created images that represent the eight million tons of plastic dumped into the oceans each year. Embodying Gaston Bachelard’s statement that “nowhere does fresh nature breathe,” she visualizes the pervasiveness of plastic in photographs, ready-made assemblages, models, and collages, in the hopes that raising public awareness will lead to collective action.

You can visit the Nice Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan through October 31, 2025, with further details on the program available in their guide on Bloomberg Connects.

Please note that some of the exhibitions at participating institutions have different dates: Particles, The Human Tale of Dying Water at Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre closes on September 7; Matisse Méditerranée(s) at Musée Matisse closes on September 8; Nice, from the Shore to the Sea at Villa Masséna closes on September 21; and both Seas and Mysteries at Musée de la Photographie Charles Nègre and The Relics of Foam at Musée des Beaux Arts Jules Chéret close on September 28.