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About

Tanguy Benoit (b. 1997 in Rillieux-la-Pape, France) is an artist based in Geneva, Switzerland. Spanning installation, game engine-based simulation, and film, his multidisciplinary practice engages with the cultural and environmental narratives embedded in representations of landscape as they appear in entertainment media such as cinema. His works often incorporate makeshift viewing devices, hand-built dioramas, and structures made from construction-grade timber that evoke the behind-the-scenes aesthetics of set design and foreground their own materiality.
Benoit’s recent works consist of reconstructions of places he has never physically visited by blending documentary research, and speculative narratives. In Sandbox (2024), for instance, he relied on satellite imagery, cartographic data, film clips, and archives to map the Monument Valley area. This gave rise to a short film in which narrative fragments borrowed from Navajo mythology as well as from the mining and filmmaking histories of the region overlap, without showing any characters onscreen. More broadly, human presence in Benoit’s works tends to appear indirectly through traces, ruins, altered terrains, or, as in Tumbling Tumbleweed (2021-2024), via non-human stand-ins. In this series of game simulations, an invasive dried bush rolls over landscape reconstructions of famous film sets used by Hollywood to shape narratives of territorial appropriation. By avoiding direct depiction of human figures, Benoit addresses how the idea of empty or unclaimed spaces has historically underpinned colonial ideologies of expansion.
Tanguy Benoit graduated from the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). He has exhibited at the Villa du Parc art center in Annemasse, France (2024); he was represented by imagespassages during the Festival NuméricA at La Turbine, in Annecy, France (2024), and his work was commissioned for Noam Toran’s We Crave Blood exhibition (2023) at RawArt Gallery in Tel Aviv, Israel. Since 2021, he has been a guest tutor in the HEAD – Geneva’s Space and Communication master program, participating in several pedagogical workshops and student-led research projects.

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    Education
    2016–2019, BA in Visual Arts, Construction option, with distinction (honors), HEAD – Geneva, Switzerland
    2019–2021, MFA in Design, Space and Communication orientation, with distinction (mention excellent), HEAD – Geneva, Switzerland


    Selected Exhibitions
    2024, Voies d’évasion (group exhibition), Villa du Parc, Annemasse, France
    2024, Festival NuméricA (festival), represented by imagespassages, La Turbine, Annecy, France
    2023, We Crave Blood (group exhibition), RawArt Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel
    2021, MFA Graduate Show (group exhibition), HEAD – Geneva, Switzerland
    2020, Montage: Design and Film, Film and Design (group exhibition), during The Design Film Festival (online festival), Design Museum of London, French Institute of the United Kingdom
    2019, Grand tour (group exhibition), HEAD – Geneva, Switzerland
    2018, Soucoupes volantes, Fliegende Untertassen, Flying Saucers (group exhibition), Ariana Museum, Geneva, Switzerland
    2018, Soucoupes volantes, Fliegende Untertassen, Flying Saucers (group exhibition), Porzi, Langenthal, Switzerland
    2017, Dioramas (group exhibition), Museum of Natural History, Geneva, Switzerland


    Selected Awards, Residencies & Grants
    2023, Matza (residency), Geneva, Switzerland
    2021, Award of Excellence, nominated in space design, Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland


    Selected Publications & Press
    FEO, R. & HURTADO, R. (2021). Physical Editing, (1). HEAD – Geneva. (p. 66–71)
    GERBER, M., HOHMANN, K. & KNÜSEL, E.-M. (2018). Soucoupes volantes, Fliegende Untertassen, Flying Saucers. HEAD – Geneva. (p. 64–67)
    BASTIAN, L., BOZET, C., HOHMANN, K., KNOEPFEL, M., PARENDEAU, E., ROHRBACH, G. & TIÈCHE, A. (2017). Interventions artistiques : un abécédaire des tactiques et stratégies. HEAD – Geneva, (p. 62, 118–119)


    Academic Positions
    2021–present, Tutor, Space and Communication master’s degree, HEAD – Geneva, Switzerland