French Ivorian artist Camille Provost is asking visitors in Paris to do something most galleries forbid: pick up the art and rearrange it. Her second exhibition, “Le Masque et Le Vertige (Swear That You’ll Play),” runs Oct. 22 through Dec. 20 at Acne Paper’s exhibition space in the Palais Royal, opening during Art Basel Paris.
The puzzle-like sculptures in wood and ceramic draw on a West African philosophy of existence that treats time as nonlinear rather than a straight line from past to future. They’re deliberately open-ended and unfinished, built from materials that evoke a domestic world and the remnants of a fractured home. Provost has described her approach to the past in terms of agency rather than accuracy.
“I’m not so interested in the veracity of the past, or of memory in general,” Provost told The Art Newspaper. “It’s more about how I can show myself that in the present I can have an impact on the past and change the past.”
A debut show that opened the door
Acne Paper’s Palais Royal gallery opened in 2025 as a cultural initiative of Swedish fashion house Acne Studios. It has previously hosted ceramist Peter Schlesinger and fashion photographer Jordan Hemingway.
Provost’s route there started with her very first exhibition earlier this year. Charlene Prempeh, founder of the creative agency A Vibe Called Tech, saw that show and connected Provost with Thomas Persson, Acne Paper’s creative director. The two agreed she’d be an ideal collaborator for the Paris space.
“Camille creates a fine balance between playfulness and intellectual depth,” Prempeh said. “The complexities of her ideas and the scope of research she undertakes are handled lightly, and she gives the audience space to engage with the materiality of her pieces and offers them the almost meditative (and unusual) experience of play as an adult.”
Play as an invitation
Provost calls her practice “future archaeology,” a way of exploring how migration shapes a person’s sense of self. Her sculptures function less as finished statements than as invitations. In Paris, that’s literal: Visitors are encouraged to handle and rearrange the pieces, which The Art Newspaper described as a friendly challenge to step into her world.
That emphasis on accessibility is intentional on Provost’s part. “I’m interested in having a practice that is accessible and joyful,” she said. “I know it’s very simple, but I think joy in art is really important and I want my own art to be a reflection of that.”
From the Sorbonne to the Royal College of Art
Provost was born in Côte d’Ivoire in 2000. Civil war in 2002 and 2011 kept her family moving, with stretches in Guinea, Brittany, Nairobi and Mali and a year in Senegal, before they returned to Côte d’Ivoire in time for her to finish high school. In 2019, she moved to France to study archaeology and art history at the Sorbonne.
Her connection to sculpture began during those Paris years, when she spent time in her late grandfather’s workshop in Brittany. Provost has called those visits her first introduction to sculpture.
She had no formal training in applied or fine art when the Royal College of Art accepted her, and she moved to London in 2023 to begin her studies. She now works from a studio in Hackney.
In January, following a residency at Project Loop in Hoxton, a cultural hub focused on decolonizing and diasporic narratives, Provost held her first exhibition. It featured seven sculptural works in woven rush-fiber, ceramic and wood, carved and reassembled into enigmatic objects. That’s the show that caught Prempeh’s eye.
Plan a visit
“Le Masque et Le Vertige (Swear That You’ll Play)” is on view through Dec. 20 at Acne Paper Palais Royal, 124 Galerie de Valois in Paris. Acne Studios lists gallery hours as 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and noon to 7 p.m. Sunday.
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