Anaïs Tondeur

Anaïs Tondeur

Born in 1985. Lives and works in Paris.

A graduate of Central Saint Martins (2008) and the Royal College of Arts (2010) in London, the practice of Anaïs Tondeur has developed around her quest for a new form of political art anchored in ecological thinking. Crossing natural sciences and anthropology, myth-making and new media processes, she creates speculative narratives and investigations through which she explores other modes of interspecies cohabitation. Her multidisciplinary approach is based on collaborations with researchers in anthropology, philosophy, geology or ecology.



Video transcription

My role as an artist engaged with the ecological crisis and crises of sensitivity, is to try to develop proposals and propositional forces that are carriers of transformation regarding our approach to the world and our relationship with other living things and to insert the human into the great cycles of the earth.


Chernobyl Herbarium, 2022

Pigment prints on Hahnemühle paper

This project is composed of a rayograph created every year since the Chernobyl explosion, made by directly imprinting specimens from a radioactive herbarium onto photosensitive plates. These plants, cultivated in the soils of the "exclusion zone" surrounding the power plant, are studied by the team of bio-genetician Dr. Martin Hajduchto to evaluate the effects of radioactivity on the flora in the contaminated area.

Material traces of an invisible disaster, these images are captured on the edge of the visible. Alongside 36 fragments of texts by philosopher Michael Marder, they invite the viewer to reflect upon, signify, and symbolise the peace of mind that the accident fragmented and, perhaps, to cultivate another, more environmentally-attuned way of living.


Work organisation