From the entry desk to the exhibition spaces, the security staff of cultural institutions watch over works of art, visitors and spaces day in, day out. Artist Lassana Sarre shared the daily life of the security personnel of the Palais de Tokyo, observing gestures, conversations and stories that go unnoticed by visitors. Through his in situ wall paintings and sound work, he has reconstituted these discrete presences that he got to know through listening and observation, and retells the stories of the bonds that they have created with each other and with their colleagues. Each painting opens up a space of reflection where collective memory, resistance, introspection and silence come together.

His colours, often made using earth and at times in a dialectical relationship with white and black, shadow and light, create a fertile state of doubt which reveals human contradictions as well as the power relations inscribed in the gaze. Drawing on the history of art and on personal experience, Lassana Sarre’s work restages the security personnel’s patrols, footsteps and long periods spent waiting, the beeps, the shifts and the breaks that rhythm their days, and their secret histories, solitary or shared meals, furrowed brows and exchanged smiles.