ÎlE BRÉSIL
Île brésil|in the press
return to altamira
audiovisual installatiONS
my body is political
copan
CREATING DESERTS
nnipas
COMMISSIONS
EXHIBITIONS|INTERVENTIONS
publications
ABOUT
BIOGRAPHY
Vincent Catala’s practice combines photography, text, video and sound installation. A member of Agence VU’ from 2014 to 2026, he recently returned to France after living and working in Brazil for more than a decade. In both his commissioned and personal work, he explores the relationship between individuals and their environment, and the subjective representations that emerge from it: solitude, resilience, freedom…
His work develops through long-term engagement with specific territories that are both clearly defined and complex, offering particular representations of the world while exploring the idea of universality through human encounters and singular geographies. This is the case with the anonymous margins of a Brazil caught between a sense of inevitability rooted in longstanding patterns and a profound desire for change. This research took the form of a long-term project entitled Île Brésil, developed across the three peripheral regions where Vincent Catala lived and worked: Rio de Janeiro’s West Zone, Greater São Paulo, and finally the Federal District of Brasília and its satellite cities.
His work has been regularly published in M Le magazine du Monde, Télérama, Fisheye and ZUM Magazine, and exhibited in Paris, Amman, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Cadaqués. In 2015, his photographs joined the collection of the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM/RJ), followed in 2026 by the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). In 2017, Galerie VU’ presented a selection of Île Brésil at Paris Photo; two years later, the project was shown at the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS/SP) in São Paulo. Éditions Dunes published a monograph dedicated to Île Brésil in October 2025, and the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi is exhibiting the complete series from 23 May to 27 September 2026.
In 2026, the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP/French Ministry of Culture) awarded him a grant for artistic creation.
Copyright : Ale Ruaro