Julien Salaud's Mythical Beasts Invade Musée de la Chasse

At the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris, Julien Salaud's exhibition 'Les Chasses Nouvelles' dialogues with 18th-century tapestries by Jean-Baptiste Oudry. In the first room, four Oudry tapestries—Chasse au Renard, Chasse du Loup, Chasse au Sanglier, and Chasse au Cerf—surround Salaud's 'Printemps – Nymphe de Cerf' (2013–2015), a taxidermy deer whose coat is covered in brown glass beads, its antlers extended with beaded branches. The deer stands on a mound of sewn skins, appearing to emerge from both the pelts and the surrounding tapestries, reversing the hunter-prey dynamic. In the second room, 'La Chasse au Vol' tapestry depicts falconry, paired with Salaud's 'Faisanglier' (2015), a hybrid creature combining a boar and a pheasant, the boar's body adorned with long feathers. The exhibition highlights craftsmanship, linking Beauvais tapestry techniques to Salaud's solo work in taxidermy, beadwork, and sewing. Further in, a skin tapestry opens onto a mythological hunting scene drawn with taut white threads in a dark room, illuminated by black light to create a blue glow. The show concludes with 'Emergence Arachnéenne', a film where Salaud's naked body is trapped in a giant web, simultaneously spider and prey. Salaud draws on fantastic and mythological registers to explore animal representation, symbolism, and extinction, questioning human-animal relations.