Samuel Gratacap

Resident
01.03.2021 - 31.03.2021

Fellow
2019 - 2020

Medici Residency

Journalism

Photography

Biography

Born in 1982 in Pessac (France).

Samuel Gratacap is a photographer who works in both the visual arts and photojournalism. He is interested in the phenomena of migration and the places of transit generated by contemporary conflicts. His projects are the fruit of long periods of immersion, the time needed to understand the complexity of situations and to capture what, beyond numbers, flows, maps, geopolitical data and media coverage, lies at their heart: personal trajectories and experiences.

He was awarded a CNAP grant in 2012 (Fonds d’aide à la photographie documentaire contemporaine) and the Le Bal-ADAGP young creation prize in 2013. First monographic exhibition La Chance at the CRAC Languedoc-Roussillon in Sète in 2014. His work carried out over two years in Tunisia in the Choucha refugee camp (2012-2014) was the subject of a solo exhibition at Le Bal (Paris) in 2015 and a publication by Editions Filigranes. That same year, he received the jury’s special mention at the Plat(t)form meetings at Winterthur’s Fotomuseum, as well as a working grant from the FNAGP (Fondation nationale des arts graphiques et plastiques) and the agnès b. endowment fund for the project Les Naufragé(e)s (Libya), exhibited at the Institut du Monde Arabe as part of the Biennale des photographes du monde arabe contemporain. In 2017, he won the “Prix Arendt du Mois européen de la photographie” following his solo exhibition at MUDAM. That same year, he exhibited Fifty Fifty as part of the official Rencontres d’Arles, an exhibition on a Libya torn between war and the plight of migrants.

Resident for 2019-2020, photographer Samuel Gratacap is interested in the phenomena of migration and the places of transit generated by contemporary conflicts, and places his work in both the field of visual arts and that of photojournalism. In 2021, he returns to Villa Medici for a residency on his Interzones project.

Interzones is a three-part project begun during Samuel Gratacap’s residency at Villa Medici in 2019-2020.

The aim of this multimedia installation is to bring together a documentary archive (2007-2019) and a fiction film produced in 2020 entitled Un Tipo Strano and a documentary film for which Samuel Gratacap has received support from the Fondation des Artistes. The subject of this installation work is the movement of exiled populations around the Mediterranean, and migrant transit zones between Italy, France, Tunisia and Libya.

Samuel’s documentary project and interest in the subject took shape in 2007 at the Canet detention center in Marseille. The documentary archive recurs episodically in this installation work: with the photographic reproductions of stranded documents made in Lampedusa in 2010. Then with the recovery of an amateur video in the Choucha camp (Tunisia) in 2012, which led him to leave for Libya in 2014 to continue his work on the imprisonment and trafficking of human beings in the country. In 2017, Samuel Gratacap returned to France and Italy to work on the solidarity movement in the Alps region and the living conditions of immigrant workers in southern Italy (Puglia and Calabria).

1st step_The documentary archive
Video and photographic rushes from 2007 to 2019

Pasquale Call to workers’ rally-Baracopoli in San Ferdinando, Calabria © Samuel Gratacap

2nd step_Fiction
The film Un Tipo Strano (2020)

Amadou is a young Gambian who arrives in Italy after a long journey. After working in the fields, he decides to continue on his way to Rome, where he meets three Italians his own age. They are in a busy public square at the end of the day. They hit it off and join a party where they dance the night away. The evening ends on a beach, as dawn breaks. The meeting has taken place and will take them even further, to the border crossing of the Alps.

Amadou Juldeh Bah Lead actor in the film Un Tipo Strano, 2020 © Samuel Gratacap

Use and function of archives
“The function of archives is to work on the memory and recollection of the main character. The film lends him a story, through the presence of archive fragments, which also question the fundamental role of the spectator – in the interpretation he gives to the narrative and the back-and-forth between fiction and real-life testimony.
By choosing to interweave fictional and documentary sequences, I hope to offer the spectator a more complex and embodied reading of reality. Amadou and the young Romans become the messengers of a generation that thinks and imagines differently. They go where others would not have taken the first step. And it’s clearly fiction that makes this possible. At the same time, the reality of the documentary footage always informs us about the conditions of the passage, of the ordeal, and brings us back to the question of memory. Personal and hypothetical for the fictional character played by Amadou Juldeh Bah. Collective and concrete in the case of the migratory routes between Libya, Italy and France.

3rd time_Post-fiction (2021)

“I’m going back to Italy to finalize the 3rd Interzones time trial.InterzonesI’m going back to Italy to finalize the third phase of Interzones, to meet up with the film’s actors and film them in their daily lives, in ways that might define, contradict or affirm the roles I’ve given them in the fiction.
Fiction is the story of how these young people, who have nothing in common but live in the same town, meet.

Amadou Juldeh Bah and Elena Ordonez Valverde, the two protagonists of the film Un Tipo Strano, 2020 © Samuel Gratacap

The starting point for the continuation of the project will be to question these young people about their future as actors, by filming them in their everyday lives. Their very first experience as actors, and my very first as a director, will lay the foundations for a new film that I plan to make during three 15-day stays in Rome and its suburbs. This film will be the third and final part of my research into fiction and documentary experiments, entitled Interzones. A first restitution of this work will take place in 2022 at La Banque (Béthune) during a group exhibition entitled À nos élans curated by Léa Bismuth.

To complete the third stage of his project, Samuel Gratacap is launching a fundraising campaign open to all.

Cover image: Un Tipo Strano, photogram, 2020 © Samuel Gratacap

After residency

Production grant

publication

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All our tears

in co-production with Éditions Cambourakis

2026

Based on the death of a mother crushed by anti-feminism and dissolved in the water of a river, a text found in the deceased’s personal belongings and the emergence of memories of what was experienced as a child, this book aims to reflect on the socio-historical condition of women and gender minorities who suffer violence and live with the dead. With overwhelming intensity, Clovis Maillet Monory’s family and historical investigation brilliantly interweaves our intimate and collective mourning.

This book is co-produced by the production grant Éditions Cambourakis x La Villa Médicis.

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Production grant

exhibition

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By mistake and at random

in co-production with Maison Salvan

11.03 - 02.05.2026

Nicolas Daubanes compares two creative sites of very different scales: the Villa Medici, a prestigious Roman residence, and the Maison Salvan, a modest village house that has become an artistic home. He thus engages in a conversation with works and historical figures such as Galileo, Ingres, Velázquez and Courbet. While some of his earlier works are also on display, the exhibition mainly features recent works from his ongoing research.

This exhibition is co-produced as part of the Maison Salvan x Villa Medici production grant.

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Prince of Monaco – Villa Medici Artistic Grant

The Inner Fire

2026

Fellow at the Villa Medici in 2024–2025, Nicolas Daubanes is the recipient of the first Prince of Monaco – Villa Medici Artistic Grant for the year 2025. In this context, he is developing the project Le feu intérieur (‘The Inner Fire’) inspired by the architecture and collections of the Villa. Nicolas Daubanes revisits the works of artists associated with the Villa, including François-Marius Granet, Camille Corot, Diego Velázquez and the engravings of Piranèse, using the photogram technique. He creates images in which light becomes matter, thanks to the photosensitive revelation of projected steel sparks.

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Production grant

publication

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The great method

in co-production with La fabrique éditions

2026

An Algerian immigrant family sets off to bury their father back home. During this journey, disturbed by apparitions, something begins to unravel: the secrets of the people that exile fails to make them forget.
La grande méthode is the latest book by Louisa Yousfi, fellow in 2024-2025, and explores the delicate seam between the visible world and the invisible worlds that persist in the shadows and still inhabit “Western” minds.

This book was co-produced under the La fabrique éditions x Villa Medici production grant.

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Production grant

symposium

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Preserving human remains

22.01 - 23.01.2026 - Paris

Former fellow Laure Cadot (2023-2024) is organizing and taking part in the international symposium “Preserving human remains” at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. These meetings on new approaches to conservation and the care of human remains in institutions aim to highlight and discuss professional practices in the light of contemporary issues surrounding this unique heritage.

This symposium is co-produced as part of the Louis Roederer Foundation grant.

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Production grant

exhibition

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Une pierre sous la langue

in co-production with Frac Franche-Comté

17.10.2025 - 01.03.2026 - Besançon

The exhibition Une pierre sous la langue (A Stone Under the Tongue) refers to a Saharan poem that recommends putting a stone under the tongue to forget, and throwing it towards the sun to remember… It brings together works created between 2021 and 2024, including two pieces from the Frac collection, as well as previously unseen works created especially for the occasion, notably during the artist’s stay at Villa Medici as a resident.

This exhibition is co-produced as part of the Louis Roederer Foundation grant.

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Production grant

exhibition

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Resources: Act #2

Bienal de São Paulo

in co-production with Bienal de São Paulo

06.09.2025 - 11.01.2026 - São Paulo

Conceived in the form of a pontoon, Les Ressources : Acte #2 (2025) is a monumental installation acting as a ship carrying found objects such as fragments of wood, ropes and jerrycans, reminiscent of all the boats that sail the open sea and, by extension, fishing activities.

This installation is co-produced as part of the Louis Roederer Foundation grant.

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!Viva Villa! project

exhibition

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Yvonne Rainer: A Reader

in co-production with Crac Occitanie

11.10.2025 - 15.02.2026 - Sète

The exhibition takes its title from the English term ” reader “, which refers both to a publication containing a collection of texts by an author, and to the very position of reader. This unprecedented format is extended to the context of a transdisciplinary exhibition: although it has the appearance of a monograph, this exhibition brings together a multiplicity of artists, performers and researchers, whose voices resonate around Yvonne Rainer.

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Palladium palms

!Viva Villa! project

exhibition

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Sensitive machine

in co-production with Cité des Arts de la Réunion

03.10.2025 - 31.01.2026 - Saint-Denis, Reunion Island

“Machine sensible” is an exhibition of digital, technological, trans- and multi-media works by Mounir Ayache, Diane Cescutti, Abel Techer and Raphaëlle Von Knebel, whose creations are born of a renewed attention to and mastery of textile creation, design, painting and sculpture. Each artist, through his or her visual and plastic language, questions the evolution of our condition as being-in-the-world and our coexistence on real and/or virtual territories by setting up narratives whose fictional imaginations invite us to better embrace our shared futures.

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Production grant

Tempesta

in co-production with Un Éte au Havre, Chevaldeuxtrois

01.06 - 31.08.2025 - Le Havre

Set in little-known parts of Le Havre, Tempesta echoes the myth of Prometheus and the history of the city’s destruction. In a tableau that brings together the present and the ancient, Mali Arun summons young dancers into a world of light and shadow. Chevaldeuxtrois and Un Été Au Havre present, in coproduction with the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis, a film by Mali Arun produced by Jérémy Forni.

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