Hêta,CAMILLE PRADON

Auberge de France in Rhodes, 28 June–17 July 2025.

We are delighted to invite you to the opening of Hêta, a solo exhibition by the French artist Camille Pradon at Auberge de France in Rhodes, co-organized with the Region of Southern Aegean and the Institut français de Grèce, curated by Eleni Riga.
The opening reception will take place on Saturday, 28 June 2025 at 8:00 pm. The exhibition will run until 17 July 2025.

Hêta brings together ceramics, video, works on paper and photographs, drawing on the figure of the sponge as a vessel of memory — porous, resilient and intimately linked to both human and marine worlds across the Mediterranean.
The title Hêta is inspired by the archaic Greek letter Ͱ (Hêta). Once used to represent the /h/ sound, a breath lost from classical Greek, it serves as a symbolic bridge: a link between temporalities, bodies, languages, and shifting landscapes.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the sea sponge — one of the earliest living organisms on Earth, whose fossils date back 600 to 900 million years, long before the appearance of humans.
In the southern Aegean and throughout the Mediterranean, the sponge holds significant cultural and economic importance. Its trade, medicinal uses and the knowledge of sponge-fishing communities bear witness to a long history of interdependence between humans and marine life. In recent decades, sponge populations have suffered severely from overfishing, pollution and ocean warming.
Hêta invites a shift in perspective: from exploitation to interdependence, from utility to care. The sponge becomes both metaphor and messenger — a porous, resilient body offering lessons in survival during our climate crisis.
The exhibition is grounded in Camille Pradon’s field research at sites shaped by the ecologies and histories of this living organism. In 2023, supported by Culture Moves Europe, she conducted fieldwork in Tunisia — in Sfax, the Kerkennah archipelago, Mahdia and Tunis — documenting oral traditions and fishing practices. In 2024, she was invited to present her research alongside historians and ecologists at the international symposium “A Blue Art History: Artistic Creation, Biodiversity and the Marine Environment” at Mucem, Marseille. Between 2023 and 2024, as part of the ATOPOS cvc x Office of Hydrocommons residency, she continued her research in Greece in collaboration with scientists from the Hellenic Center for Marine Research, creating new works in Kalymnos and Rhodes.
The ceramics presented in the exhibition were produced at Auberge de France during her stay in July and August 2024, with the support of the Institut français de Grèce, the Region of Southern Aegean and the French Consular Agency in Rhodes.

This exhibition is co-organized with the Region of Southern Aegean and the Institut français de Grèce and made possible thanks to the generous support of:
Institut français x Région Normandie, French Consular Agency in Rhodes, Department of Seine-Maritime, ADAGP, and Fondation Marc de Montalembert.

Practical Information
Venue: Auberge de France, Ippoton Street, Rhodes 851 00
Dates: 28 June – 17 July 2025
Opening hours: Daily except Tuesdays, 10:00 am – 2:00 pm and 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Opening reception: Saturday 28 June 2025 at 8:00 pm
Entrance free