Événements

Nestled in the heart of Montana, Butte rose to prominence in the late 19th century through copper mining, which profoundly transformed its landscape and structured every aspect of social life. Today, the town seems suspended between memory and the present. Its streets, historic homes, and land scarred by industry form an environment that is both inhabited and spectral, where the traces of an industrial past linger.

Martine Dawson enters this world through the houses themselves. Thrown up rapidly during the mining boom, they have since been transformed: unstable foundations, successive additions, patches and repairs that speak of lives shaped by necessity. Over the course of her stays, the artist observes how residents maintain their bond with these places, where traces of the past surface in the gestures of everyday life.

Shifting from photographs of exteriors to interiors, details and textures, Faultlines reveals the home as a space where different timeframes overlap. Pairing contemporary images with archival material, the exhibition frames these dwellings as surfaces of memory, where mining history, collective imagination, and present-day ways of living intersect.

Martine Dawson was born in Paris in 1988 and lives and works in Marseille. Her practice is grounded in documentary, while incorporating imagination, intuition, and personal experience. Drawing on her background in geography, her work explores the connections between territory, memory, and the construction of identity, developing long-term projects rooted in specific geographic and social contexts. Since 2013, she has participated in festivals and collective projects, presenting her work in France and abroad. In 2019, she received support for documentary photography from the Cnap. In 2021, she published Parfois il pleut sur les îles orange, vertes, bleues with éditions Le Rayon Vert. In 2022, she was welcomed as artist-in-residence at the Centre Photographique Marseille.