Image: Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche, Paris
Bétonsalon – centre d’art et de recherche in Paris will present 'Magnanrama: Media, technologies, identities and networks around Nathalie Magnan' from 25 September to 12 December 2026, bringing together works and figures connected to the media theorist, filmmaker, cyberfeminist and activist Nathalie Magnan (1956–2016). The exhibition opens with a vernissage on Friday 25 September, from 6 pm to 9 pm.
According to the exhibition presentation, 'Magnanrama' sets out to retrace Nathalie Magnan’s career through archives and films and to bring together artists with whom she worked or whose practices extend hers. The project frames Magnan as a significant yet still little-known figure in the histories of media, technology, and feminism, and presents the exhibition as a collective biography rather than a single-artist retrospective.
The exhibition description emphasizes Magnan’s transdisciplinary practice across the 1980s through the 2010s. It identifies her as a teacher, webmistress, hacktivist, and artist, while noting that she never used the artist label for herself. The text also highlights her role as a bridge between geographical scenes, intellectual and activist circles, and disciplinary fields that do not always meet, and says she worked through collective methods and feminist, rhizomatic approaches.
The exhibition includes Nathalie Magnan with No Anger, Shu Lea Cheang, Cindy Coutant, Chloé Desmoineaux with Bobby Brim and Ada LaNerd, Guerrilla Girls, Barbara Hammer, Old Boys Network, Paper Tiger Television, Julia Scher, and VNS Matrix. The presentation says these practices and relationships are used to unfold contemporary questions around technology and media, particularly their effects on intimacy, imagination, identity, and forms of resistance.
Bétonsalon’s online materials credit Mathilde Belouali as curator, with scenography by Cécile Bouffard and graphic design by Clara Pasteau. Reine Prat, Magnan’s partner of twenty-five years and the holder of her rights, is listed as the exhibition’s collaborator, and the project is described as developed in partnership with Villa Arson in Nice and Les Capucins Contemporary Art Centre in Embrun — which Belouali has directed since 2024 — under the French Ministry of Culture’s “Mieux Produire Mieux Diffuser” programme. The exhibition is also said to have been made possible through collaboration with the Archives de la critique d’art, the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, and Université Rennes 2, which houses the Nathalie Magnan Archive. The work by No Anger shown in the exhibition was produced with ADAGP support under the 2025 ADAGP / Bétonsalon grant.
The institution’s press materials underline Magnan’s networked practice and her connections to feminist media cultures. Among the supporting biographical notes, Paper Tiger Television is identified as a US collective with which Magnan made two films between 1985 and 1988 while she was in Santa Cruz, and VNS Matrix is described as an Australian cyberpunk feminist collective, founded in Adelaide in 1991, whose work Magnan helped disseminate in France. Old Boys Network, another participating reference point, is listed as the Berlin-based cyberfeminist network founded in 1997 that organized three international cyberfeminist conferences between 1997 and 2001, in which Magnan took part.
The exhibition page also sets out a series of public events during the run: the family and children’s workshops “Emoji Lab” on Wednesday 14 October, “Low Tech Engineer” on Saturday 21 November and “Sailing For Geeks” on Saturday 5 December 2026, each running from 2.30 pm to 4.30 pm. The first fixed date in the programme remains the opening on Friday 25 September 2026 at Bétonsalon, 9 esplanade Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Paris 13.
