Benjamin Loyauté (born in 1979, Normandy, France) is known as a storyteller and for his committed work on intangible heritage, ordinary forms of belief, and the transformations of contemporary societies. Through poetic, conceptual systems, his practice explores new forms of perception and alternative situations.

His work focuses on the mechanisms by which we appropriate our faculties of attention and perception. He develops a critical reflection on our contemporary condition, exploring the ambiguous status of the ordinary — simultaneously political, magical, and shaped by collective belief. His artistic language unfolds through a variety of mediums, including film, sculpture, public interventions, and installations.

For several years, his work has been rooted in the reinvention of the common good and new models of society. His sculptures, often playing with our perception of value, question the ways in which external systems — economic, symbolic, cultural — condition our expectations, desires, and cognitive attention.

His research and artistic process have been studied by sociologists and defined as a form of infra-politics, notably by researchers from the Laboratory of Anthropology and History of Cultural Institutions (France).

In 2016, he represented the French Pavilion at the first London Design Biennale (Utopia, Somerset House), where he premiered his film The Astounding Eyes of Syria. As a storyteller and sculptor-novelist, he has been developing for several years the never-ending, evolving artwork What have you found out so far?, an epic combining multiple mediums, language experiments, and narrative fragments.

His work is anchored in dialogue with the social sciences, phenomenology, fable structures, and the enigmatic logic of Kōans

Loyauté has spent many years experimenting with the notion of affordance, exploring how forms, materials, and environments activate perception, interaction, and belief. His research and artistic practice have led to invitations for workshops, residencies, conferences, and colloquia at renowned institutions worldwide, including the Geneva University of Art & Design, Tsinghua University in Beijing, the University of Shanghai, Mudam Luxembourg, UCL Arts & Sciences Department in London, the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Sciences Po and Université Paris IV Sorbonne, the École Normale Supérieure de Création Industrielle (ENSCI), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Design Miami/Basel, and the Ithra Museum in Dammam, among others.

In 2015, his curated exhibition Hypervital was considered seminal and marked a turning point in his practice, inverting existing systems. Since then, he has developed his own format of artistic intervention, presented internationally in institutions such as the MAMAC – Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain in Saint-Étienne, the MUDAM and Casino Contemporary Art Center in Luxembourg, Palazzo Clerici and Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan, the Power Station of Art in Shanghai, and within exceptional heritage sites such as the Baalbek archaeological site in Lebanon or the Parco Archeologico di Selinunte in Sicily. His work has also been featured at the National Museum of the History of Immigration – Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris, at KANAL – Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Boghossian in Brussels, as well as at Hakanto Contemporary and the Musée d’Art & d’Archéologie in Antananarivo, Madagascar etc.

Selected publications

2024
Benjamin Loyauté — Four Seasons
Exhibition catalogue, limited edition of 250 copies, 23 pages
Texts by Rina Ralay-Ranaivo & Bako Rasoarifetra
Bilingual French & Malagasy
Hakanto Éditions, ISBN 978-2-9597013-0-6

2022
Benjamin Loyauté - The Melody Of Speech
Art book, limited edition of 100 copies, 544 pages + 16-page booklet
Texts by Catherine Hug & Emmanuelle Prak-Derrington
Bilingual French & English
Éditions Dilecta, ISBN 978-2-37372-158-4

2019
Benjamin Loyauté - What have you found out so far?
96 pages, texts by Alicia Knock & Gemma Daou
Bilingual French & English
Éditions Dilecta, ISBN 978-2-37372-080-8

2017
Benjamin Loyauté - Heterotopia, Affordance & New Pragmatism
112 pages, texts by Géraldine Sfez, Véronique Dassié & Benjamin Loyauté
French (English version available)
Éditions Dilecta, ISBN 978-2-37372-034-1

2016
Benjamin Loyauté - Le bruit des bonbons — The Astounding Eyes of Syria
400 pages, texts by Barbara Casavecchia, Clarisse Gorokhoff, Véronique Grandpierre, France Desmarais, Sophie Cluzan & Florence Ostende
Languages: French, English & Arabic
Éditions Dilecta, ISBN 978-2-37372-015-0

2015
Aesthetic Consciousness? — Text in Les Sens du Beau
344 pages, collective work directed by Benjamin Loyauté
French & English versions
ISBN 978-2-912808-61-8

studio : studio@benjaminloyaute.co.uk