True Belief Version française
Works produced in collaboration with Léon Heitz Zambo, following an invitation by Katya Quel for an exhibition by Erratum Projects at Agent Troublant (Marseille), 2025.
True Belief (Belle-If) is a contemporary art exhibition that explores how repetition turns stories into truths. When a narrative is told often enough, it can shift from fiction to belief, and from myth to accepted memory.
The exhibition takes inspiration from the case of the Château d'If, just off the coast of Marseille. Built in the 16th century as a fortress and later used as a state prison, the site became internationally famous not for its history, but for its fiction. Alexandre Dumas's novel The Count of Monte Cristo (1844) set part of its action at the Château, inventing characters and events that never occurred. Yet the story was so compelling that visitors— and even the site's own custodians— began to accept it as fact. A dungeon was designated as "Edmond Dantes's cell," and the myth became inseparable from the place itself. This slippage between invention and reality is the foundation of True Belief (Belle-If). The exhibition brings together young artists whose works address memory, storytelling, and the construction of truth. Through diverse forms and voices, the show reflects on how belief is not only shaped by facts, but also by culture, repetition, and desire.
In an age of fragmented information, Al-generated content, and competing truths, the Château d'If offers a poetic and urgent metaphor. It reminds us that the stories we repeat— whether personal, collective, or digital — have the power to transform imagination into reality.
