HEY! Fabuleux Familier at Val Fleury: Ten Artists Transform Unlikely Materials

From October 16, 2026, to January 31, 2027, the Val Fleury in Gif-sur-Yvette presents HEY! Fabuleux familier, a free-entry group exhibition curated by Anne Richard. Ten artists create works from materials conventionally deemed unworthy of art: shells, buttons, fish bones, nail polish, glitter, bones, sand, and eggshells. The show challenges hierarchies of material and craft. Paul Amar discovered shells at fifty-five while vacationing in Vendée and spent the rest of his life grinding mussels and winkles in his apartment to fashion them into kings. Jim Skull has been covering the same skull for nearly fifty years. Zoé Forget braids hair onto anonymous nudes, restoring their gaze. Easy Sacha, a tattoo artist, made a two-meter self-portrait using the stencils of tattoos he has already inked. Other works include a papier-mâché skull encircled by a 19th-century Chinese rope, a taxidermy mouflon dressed in fabric with a rider on its back, and hair sewn onto a 1930 erotic photograph. Anne Richard has fought for forty years against the notion that some materials are worthy of art and others are not—forty years for shells to cease being mere shells. The exhibition is open Tuesday to Saturday 2–6 pm, Sunday 2–6:30 pm, at 5 allée du Val Fleury, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, accessible via RER B, station Gif-sur-Yvette.