The exhibition opens with a selection of new photographs from the series Parce que, concealed by curtains embroidered with text for viewers to read before they lift the curtain to discover the image behind it. The text that begins with the phrase parce que explains the reason why this image exists, why the artist chose this specific place or time. The justification for the photograph can thus be understood before the image, in a unique tautological rapport that questions the text-image relationship.

For her project Souris Calle, shown for the first time at Perrotin, the artist called upon a team of around forty musicians and singers, who each composed a piece of music in homage to Souris, the artist’s cat that died in 2014. The resulting compilation is in the form of a three-LP set, the object itself mounted as part of the exhibition and its sound played in several rooms and listening alcoves.

The exhibition relies on a carefully intentioned interrelation of elements; something in a tablescape by Belanger might appear in a painting by Smith or vice versa, never as a parroting of each other but as a riff upon which meanings compound. In this way, the eye travels between a series of fluid mise-en-scènes, brimming with the pathos of a movie set and the unsettling feeling of having stumbled into an intimate space where something has just transpired, or something soon will. Such is the sense of anticipation, humor, and dread here, as though one were visiting “a strange relative.”