Etranges Exhibitions 2002 Benjamin Beaulieu May 2026
Held at the Forum des Images (Les Halles), the 2002 "Étranges Exhibitions" was a haven for fans of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Alongside Benjamin Beaulieu’s visual art, the festival screened rare prints and hosted retrospectives that defined a generation of French cinephiles.
Étranges exhibitions 2002 was a group exhibition that took place in 2002, featuring the work of Canadian artist Benjamin Beaulieu.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find much information about this specific exhibition. However, I can suggest some possible sources where you may be able to find more details:
If you have any more context or details about the exhibition, I'd be happy to try and help you find more information!
Today, only three artifacts from the 2002 show are known to survive: a single torn page from "The Unwritten Dictionary" (the word Door, with the definition "A thing that opens both ways, except when you are in a hurry"), a blurry digital photo of The Laughing Chair (metadata shows it was taken on a Sony Mavica floppy-disk camera), and a cassette tape labeled "Ambiance, E.E. 2002, night 3" — which contains 47 minutes of silence, then a door closing, then silence again.
Étranges Exhibitions remains a cult footnote: an exhibition that didn’t just display strangeness, but performed it on its audience. Whether you believe Beaulieu was a visionary or a fraud, one thing is certain — you would have left that old glove factory in 2002 slightly less certain that the world is rational.
And perhaps that was the whole point.
If you have any information on the whereabouts of Benjamin Beaulieu or surviving works from Étranges Exhibitions (2002), contact the Archive of Forgotten Art.
The story follows Rachel, a businesswoman who becomes intrigued and suspicious of her secretary, Carole. After discovering a coded letter, Rachel suspects industrial espionage but eventually follows the clues to a specific address, leading to a series of encounters. Context Regarding "Benjamin Beaulieu"
There is no prominent historical record of an artist named Benjamin Beaulieu associated with an exhibition of this name in 2002. It is possible that: Search Result Misinterpretation:
Some automated web listings or "extra quality" download sites may use names like "Benjamin Beaulieu" in metadata or as a placeholder, leading to confusing search results. Mistaken Identity:
You may be thinking of a different artist or a smaller, private installation. However, in the public domain, the title is almost exclusively linked to the 2002 French production found on databases like
If you are looking for information on a specific photographer or artist with a similar name, could you provide more biographical details specific gallery Etranges Exhibitions 2002 Benjamin Beaulieu Extra Quality etranges exhibitions 2002 benjamin beaulieu
(Invoking related search terms)
By [Your Publication Name] Originally published in the 2002 Festival Guide
As the curtains rise on the 14th edition of Paris’s most revered celebration of the bizarre, Étranges Exhibitions, attendees are greeted not just by flickering reels of celluloid, but by the stark, unsettling stillness of Benjamin Beaulieu’s photography.
In a festival historically dominated by the moving image, Beaulieu’s 2002 exhibition serves as a grounding anchor—a reminder that the fantastic often lies in the quiet, forgotten corners of reality.
The second of the Etranges Exhibitions traveled to a disused textile warehouse in the Croix-Rousse district of Lyon. Here, Beaulieu abandoned psychological minimalism for baroque chaos.
The space was divided into nine booths, each manned by a performer wearing a porcelain mask of Beaulieu’s own face. These performers did not speak. They did not move. They simply held glass jars containing what appeared to be human teeth suspended in formaldehyde, though later analysis (conducted by a curious forensic student who attended) suggested the teeth were actually carved from bovine bone and coated in caramel. Held at the Forum des Images (Les Halles),
The centerpiece, however, was a machine Beaulieu called L’Automate à Regret. It was a crank-operated diorama. For two Euros, visitors could turn a brass wheel. Inside a mahogany box, tiny mechanical figures would reenact a memory—not a universal one, but a specific memory drawn from Beaulieu’s own childhood: a dog hit by a snowplow, a mother crying at a kitchen table, a birthday cake melting in the rain.
The horror was that patrons reported seeing their own memories in the box.
One visitor, a textile worker named Gaspard Morel, later wrote in a blog post (now lost to Geocities archives): "I saw my father leaving when I was seven. I paid two euros to see my father leave. I turned the crank again. He left again. I did this nineteen times. I couldn't stop. That is the power of Beaulieu's strange exhibitions."
The Lyon show closed after two weeks. Four attendees reportedly sought psychiatric help for "intrusive nostalgia." Beaulieu vanished again, leaving behind the porcelain masks in a trash bin behind the warehouse.
By J. H. Vienne, Archives of Curious Art
PARIS, 2002 — The art world of the early aughts was obsessed with the digital y2k transition, glossy photorealism, and the nihilism of post-postmodernism. Yet, tucked away in a former glove factory in the 11th arrondissement, a quiet Canadian ex-pat named Benjamin Beaulieu staged what might be the most unsettling—and most forgotten—show of the year: Étranges Exhibitions. If you have any more context or details
At 28, Beaulieu was already known in underground zines for his "taxidermy of the inanimate"—breathing life into broken furniture and draining the warmth from human effigies. But Étranges Exhibitions was his first (and, as he would later claim, his only) public solo show before he vanished from the scene in 2004.