On the occasion of the 2025 Architecture Biennale, the Espace Louis Vuitton Venezia presents „The Evil Eye“, a video installation by French artist Clément Cogitore. The work, awarded the Prix Marcel Duchamp, offers a critical reflection on visual manipulation, consumerism and the alienation of urban spaces, exploring the boundary between reality and representation.

The exhibition is part of the international program „Beyond the Walls“ of the Fondation Louis Vuitton, aimed at making contemporary art accessible to all.

„The Evil Eye“ is like a concentrated theater. A large LED screen displays portraits from several databases (Getty, Shutterstock, etc.) used in advertising and political campaigns. The green screen used to embed images, and the stream of stereotypical faces of artificial beauty, reference consumerist strategies. “All these women […] I see them as gathered in an encyclopedia of the living, a merchant archive of the present time,” says the artist. A dramaturgy is established between the undifferentiated, commercial style images, and a profound narrative, evoking the extinction of humanity, whispered by a female voice. The compilation of portraits and aerial views of scintillating metropolises creates a visual stroll through the contemporary technology archive.

Since the late 2000s, Clément Cogitore has worked with film, alternating between the cinematic format and installations. Inspired by gatherings, community phenomena, and belief systems, all of his work has an undertone of ritual and the sacred.



Film still: Clément Cogitore: „The Evil Eye“, 2018, video installation, color, sound, 15 min., photo credit: © Adagp, Paris, 2020, Courtesy of the artist, of the gallery Eva Hober (FR) and the gallery Reinhard Hauff (DE).