Inner Mornings, or Forms of Counterculture

How can the development of contemporary art be used to tell a story of the counterculture, which continues to influence artistic approaches to the present day? This question guides the exhibition Inner Mornings, or Forms of Counterculture.

The interplay of three important collections – the Falckenberg Collection and the collections of the FRAC Pays de la Loire and the Musée d'arts de Nantes – reveals how artists develop resistant aesthetic strategies, open up alternative spaces and dissolve the boundary between the center and the margins of society.
The project opens up a dynamic dialogue: it reveals how counterculture is collected, disseminated, and understood in diverse contexts. This creates a multifaceted picture of art as a means of questioning social realities and opening up new perspectives. Drawing on Thoreau, Foucault, and Guattari, the exhibition understands counterculture as active, discursive, and transformative. In four thematic chapters—"Claiming the multiplication of points of view and voices," "See, show, divert and denounce," "Rereading history, another story," and "Shock, shake, upset, move the lines"—positions are presented that rewrite historical narratives, challenge social power structures, and make visible artistic strategies of provocation and resistance.

The exhibition is a collaboration with the Centre Claude Cahun, the photographic collections of the city of Nantes and the Regional Fund for Contemporary Art of the Pays de la Loire.