Minor Tides

02 July–10 October 2026

Title

Marées mineures

Date

02 July–10 October 2026

Venue

Bibliothèque de Genève, Espace Ami-Lullin

Curated by

Danaé Panchaud

The exhibition Minor Tides brings together for the first time the artists Lina Geoushy (*1990), Sarah Jade Sullivan (*1995) and Farren van Wyk (*1993), presenting each of their most important projects to date. All three artists focus on portraiture in their photographic practice, using it as a powerful tool for representing collective identity, but also as an instrument for critically re-examining history and reclaiming it for the present.

Egyptian artist Lina Geoushy devotes much of her work to the history of her country and contemporary Egyptian society. She takes a lucid and critical look at the latter’s current problems, denouncing inequalities and discrimination, particularly those that are systemic and gender-based. Certain times in Egyptian history, particularly the early days of the Egyptian republic, after the end of the British protectorate, are an important source of inspiration for her, both for the artistic effervescence of cinema and photography at that time and for the modernist developments in society. In Minor Tides, she presents her ongoing project Trailblazers. This black-and-white self-portrait work, visually inspired by Egyptian cinema from the 1940s to the 1960s, revisits and reclaims pioneering female figures in her country’s history, from the arts, political activism and law, as well as science and technology.

German artist Sarah Jade Sullivan has been working for several years on the young generation living in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a territory with which she has important family and personal ties. This Caribbean state was under British rule until 1979. Her work is dedicated to the new generation of 18-30 year olds and the ways in which these young people navigate a still very present colonial heritage, difficult economic conditions pushing them to emigrate, and hybrid cultural roots. Her project Hairouna consists mainly of portraits of young adults she met during her stays in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, inspired by both art history and the codes of contemporary fashion photography. The project also includes interviews with participants, landscapes, and archival images from the country’s colonial history, providing a nuanced contextualisation to the artist’s photographs.

Farren van Wyk’s Mixedness is my Mythology explores the historical relationship between South Africa and the Netherlands, centred on the connections and contradictions of migration, ethnicity, colonialism and apartheid. The artist was born in South Africa in 1993, the official last year of the apartheid era, which racially classified her as Coloured. Her grandparents were forcefully removed, and her parents chose to raise their family in the Netherlands, where she moved at the age of six. Being born in South Africa and growing up in the Netherlands has created a space of intersectionality, weaving together South African and Dutch culture with a deep research of African diaspora roots. Her family occupies a grey space where they deconstruct the apartheid construction of ‘colouredness’ and make it their own. Her conscious choice of black-and-white analogue photography refers to the historical anthropological images of people of colour in South Africa, used to support ideas on race and legalised oppression. Being neither black nor white, a person of colour is a shade of grey in which everything is possible. In this grey area, the artist uses photography to reclaim and redefine what it means to be a person of colour. By forging their own iconography, the artist and her family are creating their mythology as an ode to being mixed.

Collectively, these projects form the exhibition Minor Tides, a title that alludes to currents that can appear almost imperceptible, but are in fact part of a deep underlying movement, a sign of profound change.