Joel Quayson, "How do you feel?", 2024 © Joel Quayson
TITLE_NAME :
Joel Quayson — How do you feel?
11/02/2026 - 05/04/2026
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris
5/7, rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris
www.mep-fr.org
MEP Studio presents the first solo exhibition by Ghanaian-Dutch artist Joel Quayson, winner of the 2025 Dior Prize for Photography and Visual Arts for Young Talents. Working primarily with photography and video, he examines the multiple layers of his identity: culture, religion, gender and sexual orientation, as well as how they interweave and sometimes clash.
The exhibition brings together two videos, each conceived as an intimate selfportrait. In How do you feel? (2024), facing the camera as if before a mirror, Joel Quayson timidly changes clothes – from sober attire into party wear – while a voice relentlessly repeats the same question: “How do you feel?” In this stripped-down and poignant video, the artist courageously reveals his vulnerability. Shaped both by a Christian upbringing and his queer identity, he exposes the permanent tension between self-expression and cultural and familial expectations. The second video, Dance like no one is watching (2025), is a montage of sequences showing the artist dancing in an empty room. Continuing his identity exploration through performance, the work expresses the liberating power of solitary dance, paradoxically filmed to be offered to the public gaze. Responding to each other, these two works articulate restraint, emancipation and the desire for self-affirmation.
11/02/2026 - 05/04/2026
Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris
5/7, rue de Fourcy
75004 Paris
www.mep-fr.org
MEP Studio presents the first solo exhibition by Ghanaian-Dutch artist Joel Quayson, winner of the 2025 Dior Prize for Photography and Visual Arts for Young Talents. Working primarily with photography and video, he examines the multiple layers of his identity: culture, religion, gender and sexual orientation, as well as how they interweave and sometimes clash.
The exhibition brings together two videos, each conceived as an intimate selfportrait. In How do you feel? (2024), facing the camera as if before a mirror, Joel Quayson timidly changes clothes – from sober attire into party wear – while a voice relentlessly repeats the same question: “How do you feel?” In this stripped-down and poignant video, the artist courageously reveals his vulnerability. Shaped both by a Christian upbringing and his queer identity, he exposes the permanent tension between self-expression and cultural and familial expectations. The second video, Dance like no one is watching (2025), is a montage of sequences showing the artist dancing in an empty room. Continuing his identity exploration through performance, the work expresses the liberating power of solitary dance, paradoxically filmed to be offered to the public gaze. Responding to each other, these two works articulate restraint, emancipation and the desire for self-affirmation.