Ali Cherri Sommeils légers

Born out of donations, bequests, and individual passions, Musée Dobrée bears the imprint of those who have collected objects over different spaces and times. This love of collecting raises questions: who has the power to own an object and preserve it, and according to what narratives?

For Ali Cherri, occupying this space means more than just displaying art – it’s an engagement with the institution itself. The exhibition revolves around the figure of the guardian: of objects, stories, and visible or invisible borders that determine what enters History and what stays out.

In Champ/Contrechamp, thirty prosthetic glass eyes stare back the visitor. In museums, the gaze usually runs one-way – but here, it’s inverted: who is watching whom? In Returning the Gaze, bronze faces cast from Egyptian artifacts stare back. The looted and catalogued object regains both face and agency.

Somniculus places visitors in deserted rooms where a man sleeps among mummies and taxidermied animals. The Watchman follows a soldier standing guard night after night along a disputed border. Between vigilance and hallucination, the film questions the cost of guarding a boundary, the legitimacy of which is uncertain. Guardian of heritage or border guard: the same gesture, the same solitude, and perhaps the same ambiguity.